By Anna

Rice. One-third of a cup of rice can be a meal. A twenty pound bag of rice contains 80 cups of rice. In the U.S., long grain rice is the cheapest and easiest to buy in bulk – 20 pounds for $15. Once when my Aunt Helen visited, she saw I only had one sauce jar in my fridge and proceeded to laugh and post an image on social media. Granted, she also took me out for lunch and let me keep the leftovers. In my undergraduate years, I would skim the line between hoarding free food from all the campus events and trying to eat it for so long I got food poisoning. I used to ask people with meal plans if I could have their leftover Chick-Fil-A sauce to put on my rice. In a good month, I could spend $15 on food. Long-grain rice takes longer to digest than short-grain rice because it is high in amylose, a starch molecule. Rinsing rice removes some of the starch, preventing grains from clinging to one another, so the rice isn’t as sticky. Soaking rice can decrease the cooking time required. Then, the rice water can be used as a plant fertilizer. Leftover rice can be used in fried rice or left to ferment. When I was sixteen and a waitress at Winstead’s – a local diner – the manager joked with me that during the War the owner was clever and put the horse meat signs on the bottom face of the door so that, though the signs were posted, no one would see them. None of my coworkers believed me when I told them all the foods that can be bulked up with sawdust: bread, meatballs, and even rice crispy treats. Isn’t it common knowledge that undercooked potatoes fill your stomach and take longer to digest, or is the potato famine remembered in name only? It used to be that during bad harvest years, there were prohibitions against wasting grains to make alcohol. Every gallon of beer could use two pounds of wheat. The idea of prohibition may seem preposterous in this great country of full of microbreweries. In such a country there is no need to know about blight, blotch, and ergot. My father made note when he traveled to India and saw the people savor the rice rather than chicken on the plate. When I first tried my bamboo steamer, the rice was hot and sticky but I ate it all straight off of the mat. Do you think of rice as a side dish, when it comes for free next to your entrée? Or do you eat every grain and kiss the bowl? If there is not enough rice to feed us all, may the rest of us at least know how to cook it properly.