A word about rice

I am a rice person. I will eat rice with some butter (margarine is scary and butter is full of perils) and Parmesan cheese (cheeses are mucus forming…I don’t know why we eat the stuff) I might throw in some veggies or whatever is in the fridge–be sure to check everything while in there–RM buys veggies just for their decomposition value and she ignores expiration dates.

But, I’m talking about rice….It’s also mucus forming. Yep, makes a great paste. Actually, we shouldn’t eat rice, or meat or milk products ( infants can’t digest cow’s milk the way a calf can). No milk–what do I drink with my Oreo Doublestuff cookies?

When I was a kid, back in prehistoric times, my father use to say (before everyone became politically correct–there are some holdouts) that the reason my mom and I loved rice so much was because when she was carrying me (that was a man’s phrase for “pregnant”) she was chased by a Chinaman. Well, it was silly. But it was a time when millions were starving in China and mother would chastise me for wasting food: “think of all the starving children in China”. I offered to pack up our pantry into boxes and send them to China….

Today, rice is grown all over the world–even in Texas. Texas….Disney World should have a Texas ride…in Fantasy Land.  Texans are very nice. I stayed in Texas a year before moving to Florida:  Texans fry everything, even pickles. I didn’t have a decent meal until I got to Florida.

Rice: you can boil it, fry it, bake it, put it in soup; put chili over it (not that Texas chili), orange chicken, sesame chicken, Kobe beef–any kind of stir fry over it. Yes, it’s even in sushi (yuck).  Of course, rice is not just cooked rice and veggies. It’s also in prepared foods and even in pet foods. Purina has something called Mazuri exotic pet food and provides nutritional diets for zoo animals among others. Yes, even the Black Mamba (deadly poisonous snake) eats rice. Well, the mice it eats have rice in their “kibble” (I was a docent–volunteer–at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque for many years).

There are varieties of rice. There’s white rice and brown rice and wild rice. There’s long grain and medium grain and even a short grain rice. There are perfumed rices such as Basmati (my favorite) and Jasmine and Sushi and, John Wayne help me–Texmati rice. You know, I saw my first Texas Ranger  up close in San Antonio. She was nice. Personally, I am a big fan of the RCMPs. For those of you who do not know, that’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Those red uniforms. This one’s for you, youngster418: any one out there who remembers Sgt. Preston of the Yukon? And his dog, Yukon King?

 

Still eating Uncle Ben’s rice?  How about that Minute Rice?  My suggestion: cook “rice”. Not pre-cooked or already cooked just-add-boiling-water type rice. It’s not difficult to cook rice. I use one of those microwave rice cookers:  throw in the rice and water and even frozen veggies–into the microwave and there you have it.

And there you have it for now. I will be talking about the controversial golden rice and G.M.O.’s in general.  All right, loyal followers who I dearly love: what do you think my stand is on genetically modified organisms?