Simple Steps: Nourishing Food: An Easy Food Switch

If you are low on funds, don't want to go to alot of extra effort, and want to make some changes to your family diet, here is my vote for an easy switch that can make alot of difference...

!!!!!!RICE!!!!!!!

Eat it for any meal. Make it sweet or salty or savory. Eat it plain, or mix it with milk or veggies or meats. Boil it. Fry it. Bake it. Stew it. Sprinkle it with cheese. Substitute it for pasta, bread or potatoes. Make it your own!

"Yippeee!!! We already eat rice", you say. But alas, all rice is not created equal.

Brown Vs White Rice: When rice is harvested, it is run through a machine that removes it's outer hull. To get white rice, you must remove many more parts of the rice, thus removing the best and most nutritious parts, which are the germ and the bran. In order to get the white color, they sometimes also add things you might not want to eat such as talc and glucose. Many times they then also add back in some fake nutrients, therefore making it "fortified" rice. You've probably seen the word "fortified" on cereal boxes and also in bread. This usually means they took the natural nutrition out, then added some synthetic products back in. I guess at some point people (westerners) began to show a preference for softer, lighter foods rather than dense, chewy ones, so the manufacturers capitalized on this.

Economical:Rice is one of the most economical health foods you can buy. If you are willing to buy in bulk, you can find it for less than a dollar per pound, and organic for not too much more. If you figure that there are about 2.5 cups per pound, that is 62.5 cups of dried rice per bag. I usually use about 1.5-2 times the amount of water as I do rice. 1 cup of rice with 2 cups of water cooks into almost 3 cups of rice. That's over 185 cups of rice for your 25 pound bag! Even in my family of 8, where I cook rice several times per week, that goes a long way.

How To Switch: White rice can be a yummy treat sometimes. Many Americans eat it quite often and are not used to the more chewy brown rice. I would suggest starting to switch your family over by mixing the two types of rice, initially using more white rice but slowly changing the proportions so eventually you have no white rice in the mixture. I use a rice cooker so get perfect results every time I make rice.

Instructions For Stove Top: If you do not have a rice cooker and want to experiment with brown rice before you invest in one (you can find inexpensive ones, but I hate using precious storage space for items I buy when I am "in a stage") it is not very difficult. Use 1 cup rice to every 1.5-2 cups water (you will have to experiment with how your family likes theirs. Too little can be dry and crunchy and too much can be mushy, although mushiness is less of a problem with brown rice than it is with white rice). Put together in pot and bring to boil. Add lid and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit. If I am using it in something else such as Taco Salad (which is a great intro recipe to eating brown rice!), I just make it in the morning and let it sit on the stove all day. If I am serving it warm, either plain or as a bed for something else, I'd let it sit for 20-30 minutes.

Recipe Ideas: You can try substituting brown rice for the white rice in most of your favorite recipes. I substitute it in all of ours (except sushi rolls!). Here is one of our family favorites, Sausage Skillet Supper, which I adapted from a Taste of Home recipe. Here is a Rice and Zucchini Casserole that I am making this week in an effort to use up a bunch of the fresh zucchini-a-plenty that is piled up in our kitchen. And here is a yummy breakfast recipe for Rice and Raisin Breakfast Pudding (only I never use soy, and my family prefers dried cranberries or other fruit rather than raisins).

I am sure that once you start using brown rice, you will find more and more ways to incorporate it into your daily diet -- and easily incorporate it into your budget!!!


Rice Related Tidbits:

~Rice is arguably the world’s most important food. It is the second most widely cultivated cereal in the world, after wheat, and is a staple food of over half the world’s population. In much of Asia, rice is so central to the culture that the word is almost synonymous with food. In Chinese the line in the Lord’s Prayer is translated as "give us this day our daily rice," and a Japanese proverb states that "A meal without rice is no meal." (Taken from an article called "Let's Eat Rice")

~ Here is another very informative article with nutritional information, charts etc. too.

~ If you soak your rice for 24 hours before cooking it, it is even better for you as it is more easily digestible. Many people who can't seem to tolerate whole grains are able to eat them using this method as it helps to break down the hard outer shell of many grains.

~ There is a strict diet called The Rice Diet and it has purportedly helped many people regain their health.

~ I hear there is a kids book called "Everybody Cooks Rice" (the same author, Norah Dooley, also wrote "Everybody Bakes Bread").

~ And, of course, good old Wikipedia has a very informative article about rice.