Fried Brown Rice

Today continued my quest to use up the surplus of eggs that I had unwittingly stocked my refrigerator with. (Not realizing I had eggs, I had bought a carton during each previous shopping trip.)

I tried to think of something that I could make for dinner, besides an omelette, frittata, or quiche.

Ah! Fried Rice. Just the thing to fit the bill.

I had never made fried rice before today. Before I get your hopes up – this was not a perfect first attempt at fried rice. I want to let you know the truth. This final product didn’t nearly approximate the taste or texture of something you might find in a restaurant. I didn’t follow the ‘fried rice’ rules, so to speak. I didn’t let my rice cool enough before frying it. I didn’t take the egg out of the pan, fry the rice, and put the egg back in. And so on. Nevertheless, this very distant relative of restaurant fried rice turned out to be a warm and satisfying dish. And it used up 3 eggs – that’s the important part.

I started with the summer’s last batch of green beans, received today from my CSA.

I chopped baby carrots into nibble-sized pieces. I then set the green beans and carrots into a steamer basket, along with some shredded green cabbage.

I sauteed a white onion with butter.

Then, I mixed around the eggs.

Finally, I added the brown rice, steamed green beans and carrots (with a bit of the cabbage), and soy sauce, along with a sizzle of Wegman’s high heat Asian saute oil. I stirred and stirred for awhile, on high heat. When the bottom part started to burn, I was forced to turn off the heat. Alas, the rice had not reached the point of being dry and crispy, like true-to-form fried rice. This was still sticky and moist. It was a choice between sticky and moist fried rice or burned and blackened brown rice. Guess which one I decided to allow to come to fruition? I go for crispy food sometimes, but I’m not a fan of food which is charred beyond recognition.

As I turned off the stovetop and let the hot rice concoction steam, I took the steamed cabbage and made a quick dressing, as inspired by World’s Healthiest Foods . The marinade consisted of EVOO, lemon juice, minced garlic, salt & pepper.

Do you like fried rice? Have you ever made it?

Back to Photography

So, here’s the deal:

I’ve been holding off on creating photo posts because I wanted to wait until I got a digital SLR camera… But now I’ve decided to try and use the macro focus setting on the point-and-shoot to see how that goes.

This morning I started off with the newly omnipresent Green Monster, which today had a distinctly non-green, chocolate brown hue. I’m enjoying the Garden of Greens Choco-Berry powder I got at Wegman’s – it’s a nice low-sugar, high-antioxidant cocoa concoction that goes well with everything from plain yogurt to cold milk. Adding half a scoop to my morning smoothie gives my Green Monster a nice flavor variation.

After returning from a trip to a local consignment shop where I sold three items and made $3.90 (whoa! lol), I started trying to quickly assemble some vegetarian sushi rolls. (My husband and I were trying to make it in time to see a free theatrical performance.) My first attempt to cut the sushi roll was not successful; maybe the chef’s knife I was using was not sharp enough? The brown rice, nori, and tofu filling ended up in a great big mish-mosh (not pictured here.) The second roll worked out better, and it went well with the freshly cooked edamame, which I had boiled in salted water. The edamame came from my CSA – it’s really fun to get the occasional atypical offerings in the farm share. Dessert was a piece of seeded watermelon, also from the farm share.

After we returned from the play, I was enthusiastic to use a recent purchase, agar agar, to make a new creation: kanten. My first introduction to kanten was years ago at Angelica Kitchen in NYC – kanten was always on the dessert menu in one fruity form or another; if I remember correctly, it was usually served as a parfait. It’s only after doing my Macro Month that I learned what kanten is: a form of vegan jello, using a sea vegetable derivative rather than a by-product of the cattle industry to make the gelatinous consistency of the dessert. I hadn’t been able to easily track down agar agar during the aforementioned Macro Month, but recently I found it and decided to embark upon a jelled fruit juice adventure.

Right now the black cherry ‘jello’ is chilling in the fridge – I’ll let you know how it turned out on my next post.

For dinner, I was in the mood for breakfast, and made a 2-cheese omelette with a slice of Ezekial bread and some sauteed mushrooms and onions on the side. There was also kale… I really need to find a more exciting, easy-to-make dressing for kale – I’m more in the mood for a creamy dressing lately on the rough leaves – does anyone have a quick and healthy creamy dressing recipe that goes well with kale?

Fun to have the blogging momentum back – I’ll see ya tomorrow!