Recipe: Persimmon Rice Pudding

Ingredients:
1 pint fresh persimmons
2/3 cup Arborio rice
3 1/2 cups milk (I used half skim, half whole)
1/4 cup honey
2 T sugar
1/4 t salt
zest of 1 blood orange

Procedure:
Gently rinse the persimmons and remove the stems. With a spatula, press the persimmons through a sieve to separate the pulp, seeds, and skins from the relatively tiny amount of usable persimmon glop. You can suck on the seeds but apart from that I doubt they have any real use. You won't end up with a lot of glop, but you don't need that much.

In a large saucepan, combine rice, milk, honey, salt, zest, and sugar. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently, then reduce heat to lowest setting and leave it, stirring from time to time
until the pudding is quite thick and the rice is soft. This will take ages. You can read philosophy while this is happening, or talk to your sister on the telephone, or bang your head on the table and think about the awkward email you got from the Werewolf this morning, about how sorry he is you're afraid to go in your office and how he'll try to make you feel more welcome from now on. Feel terrible about making the Werewolf feel guilty. Contemplate skipping town.

Oh, right, the pudding! Ah, it's looking nice and thick now, time to take it off the heat and stir in the persimmon goop. Serve warm and awkward.