Samples from Nutritious Desserts by Anita T. Sullivan

Baked Rice Pudding

½ cup brown rice

Pour 2/3 cup boiling water over uncooked rice in baking dish. Add a pinch of salt, 3 cups soymilk (or any other milk of your choice), a tsp. of lemon zest or grated lemon rind, 1 tsp. nutmeg, a sprinkling of cloves, 2 beaten eggs, 1 ½ tsp. vanilla, and about ½ cup sukanet (unrefined sugar). Stir well. Cinnamon and raisins could be added for those who like them.

Bake uncovered in 300° oven for 2 hours. No need to stir, but it doesn’t hurt. Serve with cream if you’re so inclined!

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Apricot

And then the horses of Genghis Khan could gallop west no more
because they were running between apricot trees
and would tear their necks on the low branches
would sink to the hocks in those thick, other grasses.

They knelt and let their hides silken in the sun
of villages with five-syllable names
like the one where my mother was born.
Apricots inside her father’s orchards
ripened dark, focused
orange that best stirs the violin heart.

And so they say, our gypsy music was played
on bows strung from the tails of those ancient horses
who ate the grass beneath the trees, that fed
their bodies, that stained their blood, and
the whole country came to owe the excellent quality
of its sorrow to the elliptical reasoning of the fruit.