Day 50 - All Brown Rice is (are?) not Created Equal

Am I typically a patient person?? Well that depends on whether I'm in a hurry or not. Hahaaaaa!

The beauty in cooking with only whole foods is the time, love and care it takes to create a wonderful meal from scratch. The satisfaction I feel in knowing exactly what I'm consuming is also reassuring. However...there are those days when I get home and need to throw a meal together in a matter of minutes. Usually this would lead me to pull some prepared food concoction in my cupboard or freezer that's usually loaded with additives, sugars and a plethora (I love this word) of processed ingredients. Now I know better, and instead I turn the oven up really high to 400 or so, and start chopping up some fresh veggies that I'll coat with a bit of olive oil, kosher salt, and spices and throw the whole lot in for about 20 min. Maybe while those are roasting, I'll pop some fresh fish on a hot grill pan as well.

While starch is not always a necessity, I do crave brown rice every now and then, but while I'm cooking everything else, I spend most of this time hemmin' and hawin' about whether I even want the damned rice. By the time the veggies and fish are almost done, it's too late to get the rice going and unfortunately brown rice usually takes 45 minutes to cook...or so I thought.

Because of my new found mistrust of the food industry, I was initially skeptical of Success Boil-in-Bag Whole Grain Brown Rice which only takes 10 minutes to make. Ingredient: Precooked Parboiled Whole Grain Brown Rice (Long Grain)

The mere term "boil-in-bag" was frowned upon in my house as a kid. My mother being from Charleston SC, would NEVAH-EVAH, I mean under no circumstances known to mankind, buy a "boil-in-bag" rice product but then again, she also would never eat brown rice either. So I'm basically dishonoring my geechee ancestors and family on both fronts, just by endorsing this product anyway.

But here's what I found out. The nutritional benefit of this particular brand/process is actually a bit more favorable than regular brown rice...I still don't believe it. And by a "bit more favorable" I mean that it contains one more gram of fiber...that's it; nothing to get over-excited about of course. I suspect that this has something to do with the par-boiling process. I would like to care enough to delve deeper, but I'm afraid of what I'll discover. So for now ignorance is bliss.

Feel free however to dash my hopes!