The Miracle of Horchata

Ahhhh... a nice, tall, cold glass of horchata (minus the cinnamon, of course!). What could be better?

I tell ya, one of my favorite times of the year is in December. Not only is Christmas right around the corner, but so is the Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta, and with that comes HORCHATA! Say it with me now... HOR- CHA -TAaaaaa!

Ah, yes. It has a lovely ring. And it is as simple as boiling water. Well... almost.

Horchata is a Spanish drink made of rice, water, sugar, and cinnamon - basically, rice milk with flavor. Of course, when you have friends in the Mexican community here like me, you can get yours made special without the bane of my exsistance. Add a little ginger and I am good to go!

I have always loved this drink, especially in the summer over ice, but for me, I could drink it anytime. And now, with Andante on rice milk, I am free to indulge all I want... and free to cut back on the massive amounts of sugar a real horchata recipe calls for. With the commercial price of rice milk these days (almost $5.00 for a 32 oz. box), heck yeah I am gonna make my own.

So I did. Yes, I took on the task today and made my own rice milk. It was scarily easy, except I got a bit ambitious and double the recipe right off the bat, NOT realizing just HOW much water I was going to be pouring into the rediculously small bowl that I started off with. All I can say is thank God for the immersion blender.

At first sieve, it was a bit too thick, and not very sweet, so I added (what seemed like a ton of) water, some pure vanilla, and some coconut oil. In the end...after Lord knows how much water, I ended up with a gallon of rice milk that will have to be cut in half with even MORE water when served, all from two cups of Thai jasmine rice.

The estimated final cost: 50 cents

(Yup, you read that right. 50 cents. Incredible.)

Lesson learned: I will definitely be making my

own rice milk for the boy from now on.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get the added calcium in there. Do you know how hard it is to find calcium that is not "whitened" by yellow dye? (not easy, I tell ya!)

So off I go to search. Seek and ye shall find.


Seriously!

TinaMarie