Pudding!

When we were courting, Dave & I had a bit of an adventure when his brakes gave out on some twisty windy dirt road in the Sierras. He told me about a movie he'd seen (or book he'd read) where the characters were supposed to be having adventures. Unfortunately, one of them didn't really know what an adventure was. So, the guy that did know what an adventure was told him that he would alert him to an adventure in progress by saying "Pudding" whenever they were having one.

This whole dietary change-up is definitely an adventure.

The latest adventure is... what to eat when my now-forbidden stash of artificially sweetened, cow-milk-based little cuplets of Jello pudding are all gone? 

I've been worrying about this more as my supply has steadily dwindled. 

So, yesterday I bought a bag of tapioca, thinking I'd do something rice-pudding-like with tapioca and almond milk. I dutifully googled tapioca pudding recipes, only to find they involved constant stirring. 

I'm doing this dietary adventure primarily in the hopes of bringing healing to my hands. Using my few remaining hand points for endless stirring of tapioca seemed to defeat the purpose.

Then... Behold!  A crock pot tapioca pudding recipe!  Woo Hoo!

Some reasonable substitutions and additions, and now I have Pudding!

The original recipe is here:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Tapioca-Pudding/Detail.aspx

My variation:

• 1/2 cup small pearl tapioca
• 3/4 cup water, more or less
• 3 1/2 cups almond milk (the 60 calorie/cup kind)
• 2 T raw sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 T organic whipping cream or coconut based coffee creamer
• 1 t vanilla
• 6-8 drops liquid stevia
• a dash or two of fresh ground nutmeg

Soak the tapioca in the water for an hour or two. Mix the eggs in a separate bowl. Dump everything except the stevia & the nutmeg in the crockpot, and whisk together. Cook on low for however long it takes. Mine took about 3 or 4 hours. Periodically stir/whisk the mixture... increasing from about once per hour at first to about once every 20 minutes near the end.  If the tapioca gets too thick before the pearls get translucent, add  a drizzle of water or almond milk.

When the pudding's done, whisk in the liquid stevia and the fresh nutmeg.

The almond milk is a bit sweet, so you don't need as much sugar as the original recipe requires.  Do not use powdered stevia. It's gross.