My favorite whole grain, YAY!

Brown rice is on the menu tonight.  I know what you're thinking; soupy or maybe crunchy.  Nope, this is PERFECT!  Of course, that is thanks to CI, my favorite cooking magazine.  If you are not familiar, please check them out.  They basically test the ingredients and the recipe, sometimes hundreds of times, until it is perfect.  Well worth the price of admission!  They also have a PBS show, ATK as well as a "less OCD version" of CI called "Cook's Country." 
Brown rice is delicious and makes a great addition to many meals.  It's nutrition profile weighs in with ~100 calories per half cup serving, ~2 grams of fiber and is a good source of magnesium and selenium.

1.5 cups brown rice (I like Texmati which probably shocks all of you)
2 1/3 cups water
2 tsp unsalted butter or vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt

With oven rack in middle position, heat oven to 375 F.  Pour rice and salt evenly in a glass dish.  I use my glass pyrex lidded dish and it hasn't failed me yet.  If you don't have a lidded dish just prepare to cover it with a double layer of aluminum foil.
Nuke the water to  boiling, throw in the butter or oil, pour it over the rice, cover and bake for one hour.
Take the dish from the oven and remove the cover.  Fluff it and put a towel over it for 5 minutes.  Take the cover off and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Serve immediately to oohs and aahs and "this can't be brown rice."
This also freezes amazingly well for single servings.  Just spread it on wax paper on a cookie sheet and freeze.  Transfer to a zip-top bag for longer storage. 

How important is it to know where your food comes from?

This morning I was encouraging my Mother-in-law to take home some of our eggs from our chicken ladies in the backyard.  We do eat eggs but it's easy to get behind and I don't mind sharing them anyway.  She declined on the grounds that now that she's seen the chicken lay the egg she did not want to eat it.  Having been raised in the country this struck me as odd.  Especially for her, a pre WWII generation American.  To be fair, she did not grow up on a farm but in a very agriculturally focused area, Decatur, IL.  Is this where America has gone?  Can we ever come back?  It is very much how I was raised and my leeriness of big corporations but doggone it, I want to know where my food comes from.  I am not so trusting that the companies have the health of me and my family in their top five reasons for existing, despite what their ads may say.  I am not so trusting that the animals are being treated humanely.  I'm not a vegetarian, though I was for 12 years.  I could never go back there again.  I do believe that cows, hogs, chickens, etc are food.  But I don't believe that our current food system/model is nourishing us or exhibiting good stewardship.  It has made food cheap and abundant.  And look where that has gotten us!
Though it may be disconcerting to many, meat comes from formerly living animals that had bones, teeth and a heartbeat.  Apples come from trees, grapes from a vine, potatoes and carrots from the dirt.  Perhaps if we were more connected to our food, we'd be more connected to the land.  Perhaps if we were more connected to the land, we'd be more upset about safeguarding it from exploitation.  Perhaps if we appreciated food more, we'd eat more real food and less food stuff.