Horchata!

 Tita has been asking for D-A-Y-S for us to make some horchata.  If you have never tasted it..you really don't know what you are missing!  It is pronounced Orchata...the H is silent... It is a traditional Mexican sweet rice drink, and it is YUMMY!  You can usually find this drink at most Mexican restaurants.  You will need the following:

 A blender, pitcher of water, sugar (of course!), vanilla, milk, cinnamon, La lechera (sweet condensed milk), evaporated milk, and rice.  You need to leave the rice soaking in water for at least a day (in the refrigerator), and a couple of large containers or pitchers.

I made it like this:  You just need to add 1 cup of the soaked rice, 4 tablespoons of La Lechera, 1/2 tsp of vanilla, 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 cup of milk, 2 cups of water, 1/3 a cup of evaporated milk, and 1 tsp of cinnamon to the blender.  You blend it up real good for approximately 1 1/2 minutes.  Get a clean spoon to taste it to make sure it is sweet enough for ya-if not, if it's not, add more sugar to your liking and blend it up again.  If it's too sweet, that's ok too because you can reduce the amount of sugar you add to the next batch!  Pour into a large pitcher or container.  Keep making batches of this until you fill the containers you want.  When you pour it into the containers, pour all of it, even the rice granules.  You let it sit for about 15 minutes and then you will notice it will separate-the granules will settle to the bottom and the horchata will be at the top.   Pour it into a clean container/pitcher and stop pouring when you get to the rice granules.  Then you have to strain the granules.  I use a small strainer to catch all of the rice granules left and you throw those away after straining).  I used a whole can of the evaporated milk when I figured we had enough.  After I strained it all, I ended up with 2 milk gallon containers!  Here is the blender with the layers of all of the ingredients (before I actually blended it all):

 And here's Tita with her glass of iced horchata!  We LOVE it!

Don't forget that this needs to remain refrigerated!   We had it with dinner and it was FABULOUS!!!!  Those 2 gallons will probably only last until tomorrow!

We don't make it that often, but Tita really enjoyed making the horchata and I was happy to make these memories with her.  Yesterday turned out to be a good day after all. (: