Hamburger Gravy

This was such comfort food for us.  I started with this recipe, and went off of it a little bit.  Everyone enjoyed it, and we will have it again.  Owen gave it a 7, Aaron gave it an 8, I gave it a 9, and Noah again gave it a perfect 10.  I liked it paired with the mashed potatoes that I will share the recipe for soon.  Here's what I did for the gravy.

1/2 lb extra lean ground beef
1 T butter
3 T flour
thyme, garlic salt, onion powder to taste
2 c beef broth

Brown beef and drain grease if necessary.  Put in spices and butter, then add flour and stir well.  Add in beef broth, bring to a boil and let thicken.  Serve over mashed potatoes or baked potato as in the original recipe.

The calories for 1/4 of the total were 203, so not high in calories really.  We had this with salad and rolls.  Yummy!

Dorie Greenspan's Rice Pudding

We tried Dorie Greenspan's rice pudding from her cookbook Baking: From My Home To Yours, and this was only pretty good :(.  I love rice pudding, it is such comfort food for me, but even though I followed the recipe exactly, it didn't turn out.  It didn't set up, it was soupy.  Sad.  Aaron gave it a 4, Owen gave it a 5, and Noah and I gave it a 7.  We had some strawberry sauce on top, and that was good, but the soupiness really was off-putting.  Here is a link to the recipe, scroll down to see the recipe in English, and after searching the internet, I found out that everyone had soupy rice, that this needed to cook for at least 45 minutes, but more like an hour.  Hmm...kind of frustrating, but I will probably try this again given my love of rice pudding.  One poster said to use 1/2 c rice instead of 1/4 c, so I may try that as well.  The calories for a serving, we made 6 servings, were 284.  I would try this with the modifications suggested, and definitely serve it with some sauce.  Also, I didn't try the chocolate variation, because I like me some plain old rice pudding ;).