Rice Post!

My brain is stuck on research mode. After researching apartments and jobs and traffic and weather, my brain just can't let go. I try to distract it with other internet distractions (boingboing! zefrank! gofugyourself!), but it just keeps plunging ahead. I think I started with clothes, and then ended up on food. And the net is full of interesting things about food. For example, someone took the time to explain why fried rice needs to be made with leftover rice. And they even stuck in a few big words. It just struck me as funny, that it needed to be explained. (For once, we hit a topic that I comprehend--fried rice. I guess it's because I've grown up with it. Well, if you tried it, you'd probably consider it bastardized, but it's the way I like.)

On the other hand, I had to look up the difference between salted and unsalted butter, and learned that it all just comes down to control. I'm pretty sure I've looked this up before, back when I loved baking the same cookie recipe over and over and over again. (I'm still certain that recipe was terrible, even though I got requests for it. I guess I'll have to try and replicate it for L some day. She'd tell me if they were horrible, I'm sure.)

The goal for this week? Make molasses cookies. I think I've wanted to make them for a number of years, but I've always been too lazy to figure out what kind of molasses I needed. (Molasses=foreign to me. Back then, I wasn't even sure grocery stores in the suburbs sold it.) Well, thanks to research brain, I'm ready to go. This recipe requires freshly grated ginger and pepper. Awesome. I'll let you know how it goes.

Bonus rice fact! (from the first link)

Apparently, science says rice should be refrigerated an hour after it's cooked! (Or kept above 140F/60C.) One, I don't think my rice cooker kept rice that warm. And two, let's all pause to think of the long journey kyuushoku rice often has to make. No, thank you Mr. Scientist.

And one last thought: I had a Rubio's fish taco combo tonight, and the sodium is killing me. Swollen feet. What the hell? I'm not that old!