Ode to Brown Rice

Yes, I know I need to expand my cooking repertoire beyond brown rice and roasted green vegetables. But I cannot begin to think of life without brown rice, especially Massa Organics Brown Rice. I buy it at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday mornings for $6 a bag (or two for $10), and the purchase makes me endlessly happy.

I am the only person I know who likes to eat rice alone. And by alone I mean without anything else besides butter and good salt. By alone I also mean sans companions. Flying solo. Table for one.

Only occasionally do I actually eat rice all by itself. It seems so much more healthful and adult to add something else: veggies, the chicken breast or fish, even the side green salad.

Tonight, just before dishing up my plate with chicken and leafy green salad, I stirred some butter and salt into my little pot of brown rice. Soon enough the rice would be adulterated by the chicken juices and the vinaigrette. But for just a moment it was just rice with butter and salt: vaguely creamy and salty but with plenty of nuttiness. It was warm and delicious and totally comforting. I wanted to eat the entire pot.

But reason ruled, and instead I ate my brown rice with butter and salt alongside some browned chicken and green salad, just as a grown up girl should. But next time, I might not be so well behaved...

Read more about Massa Organics at: http://massaorganics.blogspot.com/