Eggnog Oatmeal Pudding

I was supposed to bring something for our office holiday party, and all I’d said was that I’d bring something with cardamom (I have this pretty cardamom that I’ve barely used!). But when it came time to actually make something, I was feeling so lazy that I didn’t want to leave my apartment to buy ingredients, so I decided to make do with what I had.

Last weekend when I’d made real eggnog, a friend had brought Silk Nog for those didn’t want the legit stuff. Needless to say, I was left with almost a full carton. I googled things to make with leftover soy eggnog, and found this recipe for rice pudding. Perfect! Except that I didn’t have rice, and wasn’t about to go get any. In fact the only grain I had was oats, which may have gluten and which I therefore haven’t touched in months. So then I found this recipe for oatmeal pudding, which uses pre-cooked oatmeal (allowing me to also use up almost an entire half gallon of milk, also left over from the eggnog, which was awesome) and decided to combine the two:

– Cook the oatmeal slowly with whole milk (or water if you want a vegan version) (1:2 ratio) and a little salt. Stir and scrape the bottom pretty constantly as it gets going
– Add in the soy nog (or any eggnog probably) (2 cups for every cup-and-a-half of oatmeal you started with, although it really doesn’t matter. I just poured in what I had). Cook this til it’s pretty much absorbed, again stirring a lot
– Add in some brown sugar, cinnamon, and CARDAMOM, if desired
– Stir in some extra butter, or another kind of fat if you want it extra creamy
– Sprinkle with nutmeg and serve immediately, or chilled!

Apparently my presentation left something to be desired, because people were pretty slow to try the pudding. But those who did said they liked it!