VMM 12 – Crock Pot Rice Pudding

Earlier this month I wrote that my ulcerative colitis had flared up leaving me doing a whole lot of not much.  I’ve been feeling a LOT better and I kind of thought I was in remission the last day or two. Today wasn’t the best but colitis is always a roller coaster, never a straight line. I’m OK with that, I still see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I haven’t been eating totally vegan, that lasted a full week.  I have not strayed much though.  One thing about colitis is when I have a flare up I get obsessed with what I can and cannot eat, just because I know I can’t eat whatever I want. As soon as I start to feel better I want to eat everything I wasn’t able to before.  Happily salads and fruit are the biggest draws. Unhappily a bowl or two of ice cream was slipped in too. Is what it is.

Two things I can eat unless I’m really sick are rice and bananas.  That’s just great but after a while it does get a wee bit boring.  Maybe it’s because of all that obsessing over food and rice but last week I started to really crave rice pudding. Like, CRAVE.

So I looked up the recipe, but all of them I could find had a full cup of sugar in them.  Sugar is not on my short list of foods I can tolerate, so after much thought I came up with the (now) obvious – substituting the sugar with bananas.  I wasn’t sure how it would work but it is awesome!  Nothing in it is off limits and it tastes good enough to have everyday for breakfast (and maybe lunch) without having to force myself to eat.  Win and win.

So long story short, you don’t have to be sick to make this and love it – and you don’t have to feel a bit guilty about eating it because it’s pretty much health food.  Yay.  🙂

Rice Pudding:

  • 3/4 cup brown rice
  • 1 box coconut milk (1 quart)
  • 1 1/2 over ripe banana, smashed with a fork
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp cinnamon

Throw it all in a crock pot on high for 4-5 hours.  And done.  How easy is that?  I like it cold with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

The first time I made this I used a full cup of rice and cooked it the full 5 hours, it was good but I wanted to try and make it not as thick. So the next time I used 3/4 cups rice and only cooked it 4 hours.  Looks perfect!

I’d love to have you try this and let me know what you think.  Do you have any suggestions for healthy, real food sugar substitutes?