Miss Becca Boo is in lots of pain from yesterday’s nasty sting. In fact, she’s reclining on the sofa with her foot on pillows. Her foot is swollen so much that her toes are splayed.

She has a fever of 101 degrees, and she periodically cries from the pain. I gave her half a Benadryl tablet mashed into a spoonful of pudding (she hasn’t yet learned to swallow pills—we tried).

(Sweetsie is also hobbling around, but her swelling is less severe, and she acts her normal self. She still wanted me to take a picture.)

Grace’s Vanilla Pudding
This is adapted from Grace’s recipe, the wife of my second cousin once removed. It’s called Cornstarch Pudding because it uses cornstarch to thicken the milk, but I don’t think it’s a very appetizing title, so I changed it.

This is not an over-the-top sweet, silky, rich dessert; rather, it is a down-home, light, creamy pudding that you can feel good about feeding to your kids, and somehow, at the same time, it’s still sweetly fancy, a simple family dessert.

4 cups milk, divided
1 large egg, beaten
1/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon butter

Scald 3 ½ cups of the milk in a saucepan with a heavy bottom. While the milk is heating, mix the cornstarch, salt, and sugar together in a separate bowl. Add the beaten egg and the remaining half cup of milk.

When the milk is piping hot, pour in the egg mixture, whisking rapidly. Continue whisking until the mixture thickens and it is nearly boiling, but do NOT let it boil. Remove from heat, add the vanilla and butter, and stir to incorporate. Pour the pudding into a bowl, press a piece of wax paper down onto the top of it to prevent a skin from forming, and let sit until cool. Remove the wax paper and transfer the pudding to a plastic container, or glass jar, and store in the refrigerator. Eat it plain, with fresh fruit and whipped cream, with cookies, pies, or cakes.

Or mix a bit with a crushed Benadryl tablet to feed to your ailing bee-stung daughter.

I just bought a fifty pound sack of organic rolled oats. I had been buying them in twenty-five pound sacks, but I had to upgrade since we were going through them too quickly. I’m not sure how long it will be till I’ll need to order again, hopefully at least six months.

We mainly use oats in granola, cooked oatmeal, and baked oatmeal, though I do put some in bread and cookies. The kids all love the baked oatmeal. Yo-Yo Boy says he likes it because it cools really fast once he pours milk on it. Mr. Handsome likes it because it offers more protein than cooked oatmeal (something he hates with a passion). I like it because of the oaty-ness of it, because it’s simple to make, and because it’s like a hearty cake, and I love any excuse to eat cake, especially at breakfast-time.

Baked Oatmeal
Adapted from a recipe that my sister-in-law Dee made for us once upon a visit to New York

4 ½ cups rolled oats
1 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 stick of butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten
3 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups milk

Mix the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients (I add the melted butter last, after stirring in the milk and eggs and vanilla, so that I don’t accidentally cook the eggs), and pour the batter into a greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or so, until it has baked through and is a beautiful golden brown.

Dish into bowls and top with cold milk.

This afternoon the kids were playing out in the yard when Sweetsie started caterwauling like she’d been stung. And sure enough, she had. So we set her up on the stool in the kitchen, and Mr. Handsome pulled the stinger out and I put some baking soda paste on it.

Right about that time Miss Becca Boo commenced to hollering and I ran to the window just in time to see her burning a trail to the porch like the devil was on her tail. I set her on the table and Mr. Handsome pulled the stinger out of her foot and I put baking soda paste on her foot. They pulled out all the stops in the wailing department.

When Yo-Yo Boy walked through the house he had to plug his ears. Which made me chuckle because it was only several days ago that he got stung on his foot. He was quite dramatic about it, too (I haven’t a clue where these kids learned to be so theatrical—nope, none whatsoever). He declared he couldn’t walk, so Miss Becca Boo had to transport him by trike.

I don’t know—ya’ think they might start wearing shoes now?