Wild Rice Pudding

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Is there anything better than a bowl of warm, sticky rice pudding when it's cold outside? Or cold rice pudding when it's way too warm?
Unlike lots of other places Berlin seems to be in the middle of the next ice-age. Whenever you think the cold is over, you wake up in the morning and there's another five centimetres of snow. I don't remember it ever snowing as late as my birthday. Right now I don't expect the snow to be gone by the time I get to blow out even more candles than before.
Anyhow, I made this rice pudding one evening after I got back from the gym all freezing because I had forgotten an extra pair of sweatpants for my way back. It's like a warm hug in a bowl. And since you'll be waiting for an hour for the rice to cook you might as well make more so you'll get to eat rice pudding for a few days :)

Wild Rice Pudding
150 g Wild Rice
1 l Milk
3 tbsp Agave Nectar
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Cardamom
1/4 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Vanilla Extract

Wash the wild rice. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 45-60 minutes stirring occasionally.
I like this rice pudding best when it's still sticky but it's still not as solid as baked rice pudding.
Oh, and while fresh fruit would be amazing, the part of me that cares about seasonal produce made me use local tinned peaches for the photo and it worked like a charm. If you close your eyes it will taste almost like summer is already back :)

Horchata

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I'm settling into a routine these days,  get up early, try to get some writing done, then I treat myself to some nice iced tea/coffee and some fruit, then I try to get some more writing done, then I pretend to be sporty while i wheeze my way through another run, followed by a quick lunch, some more writing, and then it's already time for another glass of frozen amazingness before it's already dinner-time (unless Verena makes me go swimming or something else, oh and this whole thing is obviously interspersed with waaay too much procrastination).
Anyhow, the reason I'm telling you about my decidedly boring life is because the iced coffee breaks have definitely become the highlight of my day. So when David Lebovitz posted his horchata recipe yesterday I obviously had to make some. And swapping the iced coffee for some horchata has kinda turned today into the best day of my week so far (not that I don't like the iced coffee but since horchata tastes even more like rice pudding than rice milk already does it trumps any other drink).
David suggests grinding some white rice in your blender but since I a) don't have a proper blender and am not planning on ruining my coffee grinder and b) tend to have a bag of ground rice sitting around in my cupboard I just went for the already ground rice. Oh, and I reduced the sugar because I felt it was more than sweet enough with half a cup.

Horchata
1/2 cup Ground Rice
3 cups Warm Water
1 Cinnamon Stick (ca. 5cm)
1/2 cup Sugar
2 cups Milk (I used unsweetened soy)

In a bowl combine the rice and the water. Add the cinnamon stick, then cover and leave it alone for at least 8 hours.
When you come back to the mix, fish out the cinnamon stick and strain the mixture through a sieve lined with cheesecloth.
All you need to do now is add the milk and sugar, pour some over some ice and then sit back and relax for a bit.