29 June 2011

What to do with 10 pounds of rice?

Dedicated readers of this blog will recall that, a week or two ago, I managed to get my computer completely soaked with rain. As part of the salvage process, I was told that the best way to dry it out was to allow it to sit for several days in a bag of rice. So I went to the store, bought a 10-lb bag of rice, smothered my computer with it, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Several days later, I fished it out, cleaned out the rice, and found that it…mostly…worked. It boots, and the screen and mouse work flawlessly, but only about 3/4 of the keyboard letters work. I’m currently debating the pros and cons of a separate keyboard vs taking the thing to a repair shop. We will see.

In the interim, I have 10 pounds of perfectly edible rice left over. Which is a LOT of rice (especially considering I’ve never bought or cooked rice before in my entire life). It seems wrong to just dump it, and I think it will be good practice to cook it, eat it, and figure out some good recipes for it. Better to try and fail here, where I have 35 restaurants within a 5 minute drive, than to start my learning curve in Burkina Faso, where that is dinner regardless of how nasty it is, right?

Right.

So starting…today…ish…I’m going to be cooking a whole lot of rice dishes. If you know of any awesome but simple recipes (I doubt I have a stupendously laden spice cabinet in Africa, and meat is probably the exception rather than the rule?), let me know. I know the Thai do good things with coconut milk and peanuts, but I doubt I can get coconut milk there. Maybe I could use condensed milk instead?

But I digress.

According to the bag, 1/4 cup of rice has 160 calories in it. I estimate there are 25+ cups of rice in the bag, so that’s…(160*4)*25=…approximately 15,000 calories, or about 7-10 days’ caloric needs, in one bag. And that’s if I ate nothing but rice.

In short, I’ll be eating rice for awhile.

So start sending me your favorite recipes, and I’ll get to cooking (both on the stove and the grill, just in case I don’t have an electric cooking utensil in Africa), and I’ll let you know what work best and what doesn’t work at all. It should be fun!