There have emerged over the past years, alternates to rice. Also, "milks" alternate to dairy type. Quinoa is one of them. "It is a pseudocereal, similar in some respects to buckwheat, rather than a true cereal, as it is not a member of the true grass family". Rice has become a no-no in our house, much to my regret! A family style meal my Mother made years ago, she called it "Louisiana Put-Together", was served over rice. Small cubes of Round Steak cut up and browned, then incorporated with onion, condensed tomato soup, a bit of milk, cut-up carrots, perhaps celery or chopped green pepper, cooked up until veggies soft, served over freshly boiled rice. Magnificent! Wonderful taste. Much rice is consumed in the world by the poorer countries, as it is the only common source of protein for those folks. Large level ingestion of rice has been purported to be one cause of obesity. (I question this, but who am I to disagree?). I believe rice is a water-intensive crop. Water is becoming scarcer, as years go by. So, rice may lose it's position as major food source for a couple of billion people. The alternatives? Frank
I enjoy rice but in limited amounts. Rice is still a staple in many countries around the world. It was a staple in China for centuries and they were not known as being fat until processed food came along. Many countries that now have fast foods/processed food are now having a over weight problem. The original rice was brown rice and then they made a process / polished of removing the outside covering of the rice to make it white in that process. When brown rice becomes white rice, large quantities of B vitamins — including 90 percent of the B6 — half the manganese and phosphorus, more than half the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids are lost. Primary vitamin B1 deficiency is caused by a lack of vitamin B1 in the diet, and is often seen in countries where the main diet is polished rice. B1 deficiency causes beri beri which is also related to congestive heart failure, Korsakoff’s syndrome which can easily be mistaken for Alzheimer’s
Asian staple and other people do love rice. Rice in our home underwent modification. For a long while we ate just white sticky rice like Tsurumai, Carolrose, Safeway are amongst some of the popular brands with some rice that is for the rich for only they can afford them like Koshihikari brand rice on sale at Marukai Wholesale Mart is 19.97. Needless to say I don't know the regular price of Koshihikari rice for it's way too expensive for our home to afford. We like rice like Kokuho Rice on sale for just 8.99. Both Kokuho and Koshihikari are 15 pounds of rice. It's so very delicious with many dishes we eat. from amazon.com from foodlive.com I've eaten expensive rice and you can taste the difference between them. Yet white rice is starchy and diabetes 2 is a big danger from starches. This prompted our home to a discussion to enhance our rice with Quaker Oates instant barley, legumes, black rice and brown rice. We let our rice soak water for and hour and a half to 2 hours before we cook it in our instant rice cooker. This combination of cooked rice combo we saw that the rice is a bit purple in color from the black rice. l We went past the color difference and decided to give it a taste. Well we are accustomed to the color and taste of the rice now which is a bit different from the slightly sweet taste of just white rice to now of a slightly, very slightly nutty taste for we are defying diabetes 2 but love to eat rice. I would like to put quinoa, but quinoa is too expensive for our home to afford. My Mom has stopped needing her diabetes 2 meds and I don't need and meds at all since we made simple diet changes like this one. Locally we have a Chinese delicacy called rice cake which is sweet and slightly oily. image is fromhttp://jamarattigan.livejournal.com/470257.html. The rice cake on the left can be peeled off one by one and typically has 12 layers at least the ones I've eaten has 12 layers. The rice cake on the right is springy and somewhat like a heavy sponge cake. Both are on the sweeter side of the scale of taste. My Mother's Filipino friend loves Jasmine rice. image from amazon.com. I too love Spanish Rice! We love Spanish rice with refined beans filled with 3 different cheeses, string cheese, parmessan cheese and Party Essential slice cheese, mmm. We have sides of fresh vegetables usually or canned vegetable or frozen ones too. image from walmart.com.
*Thanks! Be sure to check with the family though for it's something everyone has a feeling about. Glad you l!iked my posting!