Owen's Hot Vanilla

My Owen doesn't like strong flavors, and he doesn't really like chocolate all that much, so he wanted to make hot vanilla.  Luckily, although it is summer, the monsoons have started here, so the weather is nice, and on a day like this one when we have rain, it actually gets cool, so this hot vanilla was a real treat.  This was an easy recipe, and a nice change from hot chocolate.  We made it a little sweet for Aaron and me, but the boys thought it  was great.  Aaron says it has a white chocolatey flavor, and I agree, but mostly it is just vanilla, which is just what Owen wanted.  Owen gave it a perfect 10, Aaron and I gave this a 9, and Noah gave it an 8.  Here's the super simple recipe and it made four servings, with each serving being 205 calories.

3 c milk (we used 1%)
5 T sugar (use more or less depending on your desired sweetness)
1/4 c marshmallow fluff
1 T vanilla

1/2 c whipped cream
1 T sugar
1 t vanilla

Heat the milk, sugar and vanilla together in a saucepan, then when warm, add in the marshmallow fluff and stir until the fluff has dissolved in the milk.   Pour into cups and top with the whipped cream.

Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form.  Top the vanilla milk.

365 Days of Slow Cooking's Crock Pot Clam Chowder

This was good, easy, and a nice way to eat clam chowder.  We gave this an 8, and although I thought it was a little bacon-y, this was great.  I found the recipe in the cookbook 365 Days of Slow Cooking, and our family liked it.  I felt like the white sauce wasn't as successful as it could've been, the way the author made the recipe didn't make a great white sauce, but it was ok.  The calories for 1/10 of the soup were 242 calories, and this was very filling.  You can find the recipe on the 365 Days of Slow Cooking website, click here.

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 ;).