Traditional Icelandic Rice Pudding

Hands down, there is nothing that puts warmth in my body as fast as rice pudding. I absolutely adore it and could eat it every day during the winter. When I was younger I used to keep horses in a stable near to my parents' house. Each night me, my younger brother and my best friend (now husband) used to walk through the snow from the stables back to our homes. Often there was a blizzard but sometimes the sky was clear which means that it was absolutely freezing cold. So cold that when you inhaled, your nostrils would momentarily stick together. That's when we used to lay down, in the snow and gaze up, looking at the magical Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). For those of you who haven't seen them in action, they are absolutely pure magic. They are unpredictable and can change from pink to red, to green, to yellow, to aqua in just a matter of seconds. It is like a symphony of colours and movement, it's almost like they are dancing in the black sky. Anyway...when you have a display like this you tend to forget the time....and then your buttocks and hands and feet start to become numb and then you know it's time to go home. After a long, cold day at the stables, riding your horses in the snow in minus 10 degrees Celsius (add to that the wind chill) you are so tired and so cold you just want to lay down and sleep forever. It used to take me such a long time to defrost (I am always cold) and whenever there was rice pudding for dinner I was so happy because it meant that I would get warm pretty fast. I would pour in some extra milk and heat it up to boiling point. My husband prefers cold milk on top and raisins but for me that's blasphemy so I usually prepare rice pudding in two separate saucepans!!