Quinoa Rice Pudding with Turmeric

Happiness. Everyone seems to be in search of it. We all hope to find it in different places; among different scenarios. Our mind somehow has a picture of what is supposed to make us happy. Achieving a certain goal, landing the dream job, owning a fancy car, and so many more tangible materialistic things. I am no exception to this. I have always set goals in my life and assumed that achieving those goals would make me happy. Achieving one goal lead on to another and another and it never ended. I constantly kept adding on to the list of things that's supposedly is going to make me happy and my quest for the so called “happiness" continued.

There was a point when I got tired of running after the things in my so called "happiness list", achieving some, failing miserably at some and avoiding some for the fear of failure. It took a while but I finally realized that happiness does not come from achieving things on a list. I still believe in having goals and working towards them, but that's not what being happy is all about. Being happy is that surprise hug my little guy gives me, receiving an unexpected text  in the middle of crappy day, that one nostalgic chat you have with your best friend, waking up early enough to catch the sunrise, and being thankful for the all the wonderful people in your life.

On that note of happiness, I made this pudding with rice and quinoa. It’s like a burst of happiness in each bite, filled with flavors of love and warmth reminding you of all the wonderful things in your life.

Quinoa Rice pudding - 

Ingredients 

Rice - 1/2 cup 

(I used white rice; we can substitute this with brown rice)

Quinoa - 1/2 cup 

1/2 cup of sugar 

2 cups of coconut milk 

1 tsp of turmeric 

2-3 crushed cardamom pods 

Your choice of chopped nuts or fruit 

Honey or Maple syrup 

Procedure 

1. Cook the rice and Quinoa with 3 cups of water. 

2.  While the rice/quinoa are cooking, Boil the coconut milk in a sauce pan on medium heat. 

3. Once the milk comes to a boil, add the cardamom, sugar and turmeric and let it boil for another 5-10 minutes. 

4. Once the rice and quinoa are done, add them to the boiling coconut milk mixture. 

5. Let it simmer for 5 minutes. 

6. I use an immersion blender to blend the mixture to get a smooth pudding like consistency. 

7. Let it cool and serve with chopped nuts, fruit, maple syrup or honey. 

8. The pudding can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. We can add more milk or honey to get the desired consistency following the refrigeration. 

I strongly believe in the concept of letting your instincts guide your cooking process. Having said that, all my recipes are sort of a starting point and one can take the idea, tweak it, explore it and have fun with it.