— Geri Testa

I'm just gonna step back here a second and say, there's a lot of controversy right now about the use of, uh, rice and any kind of rice, white, brown, wild, other. And my, my recommendation is to use rice that is grown here in the United States, or the country where you live in, if that's possible. Uh, recently speaking to Ann Essel, she recommended to use Lundberg Rice because it is a company that stands behind what they do. I like a brown bus muddy rice for fluffiness. Um, I also find that it depends what you cook your rice in. Um, if any of you ever shop at H Mart, the world's largest Asian grocery store at my h Mart of the second floor, they kind of like have a bed bath and beyond. And, uh, they have every kind of rice cooker imaginable. So, uh, I went and looked at them because I had something in mind about what I wanted, and I'm gonna say the name wrong, uh, but it's a sohi, uh, Japanese rice cooker. And I then went online and found a refurbished one and was able to get it at a much, much reduced price. So if you have a good rice cooker, you will get that fluffy rice that you're looking for. The other thing is in this domain of following whole food plant-based, um, remember that we're not adding any oil, or we're not adding any other kinds of fats. We're making a basic, basic brown rice. So I like a brown baati in my rice cooker. And I will add one more thing. Um, I lived in Brazil for two years. I was in the Peace Corps, and I learned how to cook rice in Brazil. Every little trick in the world. And, uh, one of the, the most important things that you can do before you actually make your rice is to wash it really well, and you would just wash it in a bowl swirling around with your hands, with some, uh, tepid water, and then drain it, and then go on with your cooking. So washing your rice is another thing. It also, I think, makes your rice a little bit, um, fluffier.