How I got over my fear of not really following the recipe

I've been thinking about making this all day long. It's been a long rainy and windy Saturday, reminiscent of October weather much more than March. Intrigued by a nostalgic mood I gathered enough motivation to make one of my favorite deserts from childhood, mom's rice pudding. It is a simple thing to make, but just for the joy of it I dusted off my older-than-I-am Romanian cookbook, opened its cracking and about-to-fall-apart crinkled covers and hoped to find the recipe I was anticipating inside.

There it was, recipe #1442, "orez cu lapte," in clear dark type on crisp beige paper and very easy to follow, with only one problem. Without a scale in my kitchen, how was I to measure 250g of rice? Or 200g of sugar? And so I went on to boil an unknown quantity of water and an unknown quantity of white rice and then later, despite whatever quantity the directions asked for, added X (who knows?) ml of milk. Sugar and butter came next, then vanilla essence, and then I stirred anxiously from time to time, waiting.

After 30 minutes or so the pudding was done and came out pretty delicious if I may say so myself! Well at least Chris though so, but of course only after teasing me for having to use a recipe book to make "such simple rice pudding" in the first place. hah! wiseguy.