Rice Pudding Mishaps

So I've been on this unofficial quest to make a good rice pudding. Whenever we have gads of leftover cooked white rice, I'm seized with the sudden urge to use it rather than throw it out. (Yes, I'm aware this is dangerously close to the aversion some people have to throwing away "perfectly good" spaghetti, but I press on, because I believe it's my love of sweets and not my weirdness that gives me this irrational desire. If you, like Matt, see this differently, feel free to plan an intervention.)

Well last night was one of those nights. And I was JUST SURE that this time would be different. I say different, because in all the time that I've been feeling these rice pudding urges, never once has one of my puddings turned out to be something that ANYone would want to eat...not even me. Although I did eat one once, because I was JUST SURE that I would like it if I just gave it a fighting chance. But you know, sometimes I'm wrong. Matt spent the week laughing at me as I doggedly comsumed the entirety--all right, half--of the "pudding." It was really more of a rice mass.

Alas, last night was not a success either. I had been dreamily envisioning coming home and serving my children warm rice pudding, topped with a gentle sprinkling of nutmeg, and they would gobble it up and take their showers, and thusly warmed by their caring mother, slip sweetly away to sleep. What happened instead was that we came home, took it from the warm oven, and looked at it, suspiciously so. It looked...eggy. And true, there were eggs in it. But it didn't really look so much like pudding. Matt poked it and declared "I'm not eating any of it." This concerned me, because if my husband won't eat it, I find myself asking Is it just because he doesn't like it? Or because he doesn't feel it's safe to eat? And if it isn't safe to eat, should I feed it to the children? I threw the entire thing in the trash. I mostly lament the loss of 8 cups of milk used to make it. EIGHT cups of MILK! Never again, rice pudding. Sing your siren songs no more. I'm not wasting my dreams or my precious milk on you anymore.