Food of the Gods

Sorry to disappoint. Over Halloween, I did not go all H G Wells, don a demented scientist persona and go a toil-and-troubling to create a foodstuff that accelerates the growth of children. No. All I did was drag my fifty-year-old bones out of the house for a wild night on the town with my pals.

It was great. The hair was down, the heels were on, the music was loud, and the dance floor was bouncy.

Sure, the morning after, it felt like a demented scientist had crept underneath my skin and gone berserk, but the truth was the only infiltration to my psyche was by Jack Daniels and his best friend, coca-cola, and once they had left me, well, I was nought but a brain-dead zombie that had to travel home from their pal's pad with every joint of their being screaming their age at them.

Suffice it to say that part of the wild night out was not fun. The only light of levity was the sight of Dracula doing the walk of shame at 11 am on a crisp autumnal Sunday, and even that small joy caused me pain when I laughed.

Irrespective of the seventeen shots of coffee I, pretty much, imbibed intravenously before leaving my Pal's house I was a broken human last weekend. I got home, sat down in my kitchen and with the night before still ringing in my ears, I listened to my son's shrill whoops of joy as he and his father played Borderlands on the Xbox. I remember smiling at the cute scene of bonding, but I was, in reality, dead behind my eyes. Truth be told, I felt like a ghost in my own house, a passenger in a familiar but alternate dimension, an alien from another world with brains formed out of polystyrene and a mouth containing a tongue of cotton wool.

So, what did I do to excavate myself from this weird funk?

I made rice pudding.

I do not know why, but I believe the calling was visceral. I remember sitting on the sofa, all numb and discombobulated, my body silently shrieking at me as my son bounced across the floor in delight at conversations with an animated robot called Claptrap, and deciding that what I had to have, immediately and without question, was a big bowl of rice pudding.

As I got up to walk towards the hob, it was like an actual zombified autonomous response had possessed me. It was, I swear, a compulsion. It wasn't uncomfortable, awkward, or jittery in any way, not like things often can be the morning after the night before. No. It was strange. Somehow, the action of throwing a handful of short grains in a pan, shaking in some sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, whole milk, and a knob of butter and then stirring rhythmically over high heat for about five minutes felt, in many ways, like some form of holistic therapy. I remember staring into the milky swirls, mesmerised by how the little yellow knob of butter formed beautiful golden pools and trails on the top of the slowly thickening milk.

I think I even sighed.

True story.

Those few stirring moments of autonomous mindlessness were beautifully soothing. The smell of warm milk, fragranced by the comforting spice and sugar, rose from the pan and wrapped around me in a steamy, "It's all going to be okay" hug. I could feel myself floating away into it. I lowered the heat, placed a lid on the pan, and left the homemade ambrosia to wallow while I went away, stared at a wall, and daydreamed about nothing while life flowed around me.

It was wonderful.

With only a few nudges around the pan every so often, at the end of a calm and heavenly-scented hour of low and slow cooking, the soft, unctuous mounds of morsels were ready to spoon into a bowl. I remember genuinely believing I was having an epiphany when I remembered that Ambrosia is the best-selling British brand of canned rice pudding. It seemed to me right there and then that rice pudding was the very essence of other-worldly, fit for Godliness, heaven in a bowl. I remember looking at it like it were a marvel, not something I had eaten around my Nan's every Sunday for twenty years.

I devoured it as though it had been prepared by the fabled Athena for her daughter Penelope. For, like Penelope, with each sumptuous mouthful of the comforting elixir, I swear, I could feel the youthfulness of the night returning to my soul.

As I sat back in my armchair, fat and content, the bowl of rich, creamy, sweetly-spiced pudding warming me from within, my mind began to wander. Rice pudding, I started to think, could actually be what Homer was referring to when he described the food of the Gods as Ambrosia. I mean, yes, quite the irony that the canned variety was named such, but still, perhaps the founders of that brand had incurred a similar epiphany as me. Sadly, a Wiki search revealed no link.

Still, think about it. Rice Pudding is perhaps the most far-reaching dessert in the world. It is a dessert that has not only stood the test of time, reputedly dating back to Byzantine times, it also features on the menus of a smorgasbord of cultural tables. For example, it is a British Victorian staple, a Scandinavian festive treat, and a celebratory dessert during Ramadan. Whether purchased in a can off a shelf or laboured over in a pan with saffron, it is known in kitchens worldwide. It contains high calorific energy and is a good source of B1 and B2 vitamins, as well as potassium, magnesium, and soluble fibre. It is a useful food that anybody can eat. Old or young, food intolerant or not, there is a type of rice pudding to suit everyone. It is truly universal.

As I sat there, it became unequivocally clear that rice pudding was Homer's ambrosia. Moreover, I realised that the ancients spelt it out to us when they described how Penelope regained her youth after eating it and, similarly, Hera "cleansed all defilement from her flesh." I looked down at my empty bowl, and with the warmth of a thousand generations emanating from my core, I knew, deeply, instinctively, as my hangover lifted from my body, that rice pudding had to be Homer's Ambrosia. The only reason I could conclude as to why it had not been clearer sooner was that nobody, not even ancient Gods, liked to admit that women ever go out and get drunk.

Penelope and Hera - we see you, you pair of trailblazers!!

Who would have known as I winced past a red-faced Dracula feeling like death that I would go on that morning to remove a patriarchal shroud and liberate the age-old problem of what constitutes ambrosia from a feminist quagmire?

Sat in my chair, fat as a duck, and something else that rhymes with that line, I could feel the throes of a Newtonian breakthrough rippling through me.

Then I had a nap.

Are you not convinced?

Then tell me, why do the tiny dry grains look like crystallised angel tears?

I hope you enjoy your rice pudding!

CJ xx