Rice Is Nice

Interesting, I haven't listened to All Things Considered a radio show offered in the afternoon on NPR. There was a time right listen to the show every work night as it would come out for clock and me and my buddy Kim in our little office had NPR going all day long. A kind taken a break the last couple years and don't listen to the program as much as before but tonight I was involved in cooking my dinner which was very physical in nature, a lot of chopping of vegetables and such. Also because the show starts at 4 PM I can listen to the show while I process the vegetables for dinner. There is a great story on this afternoon show about the increase of Native American/indigenous populations in the USA. That kind of picked by interest and as I listened I was fascinated by the storyline which basically was as the craze of getting your DNA tested contract or whatever and finally not part your native roots are a lot of people are now claiming to be indigenous or native to the country. The showing of the great detail about how even though this is a somewhat measured process there's a lot of individuals who may be fudging a little bit in order to be counted as indigenous for the “cool factor”. Interestingly, the reporter went out of their way to indicate this wasn't necessarily aimed at trying to get themselves on Native American properties or financial type programs set up for Native Americans. These are folks that really want to belong to something bigger I guess. I think it's pretty bizarre. I'm still quite surprised at how much indigenous roots I might have. I really don't know how Spanish/Hispanic ties into what is considered indigenous. But both of my birthing parents were native to this area. So somehow I am sure that affects me probably not to the extent that I will begin marking a different level on documents that ask for race or national origin. I'll continue to label myself as “white” but I must admit that does make me feel a little nervous now that I know that may not be totally true.

I cooked tonight, really for the first time in some while. I made Frank actually chicken Frank using one of my cans of canned chicken that's good in my storage closet for some time. I'm really focused on using my food storage and working the cans down a little bit. Chopped onions, garlic and of course celery gave the meal so much flavor and that I of course used brown rice since that's what I tend to get when I find bags of rice on the sharing shelf. I'm getting better at cooking rice. I do have a couple of rice machines or machines for cooking but I have them put away and showing that makes it difficult for me to access. It's just easy to just measure the water dump the rice and bring to boil and then cover and steam. The directions say to sooner 45 minutes which I did. The water was pretty much absorbed in the rice was done enough. I had to choose a little bit but the kernels weren't necessarily crunchy. I still have significant bags of white I want to really learn how to cook rice and use it as a major or main food-source. The only problem is the mess I make whenever I do a foray into cooking. I love the way cooking enhances the odor of my apartment. My goal would be to make the place smell like a Chinese restaurant all the time. I hope that isn't prejudicial…