my rediscovered love of rice

Two years ago, if you asked me what my favorite food was, I would unhesitatingly tell you it was brown rice. I cooked a large pot of brown rice a couple times a week and breakfasted, lunched, dined and snacked on it hot, lukewarm, cold or reheated. Plain, with margarine, with soy sauce, with soymilk and molasses, any way I could get rice to my mouth was a good way.
Then something changed. I make less of it in the summer, and when I went back to cooking rice last fall... I just wasn't enjoying it as much. I assumed, like stir fries and curries and hoe cakes, that my love of rice had been a phase, and that phase had ended. So I've made fewer rice-compatible dishes recently, and have stopped stocking humungous quantities of rice on my shelves just in case I get a rice craving.

Last night, however, I made cauliflower pakoras, and wanted some rice to go with the meal, so I meandered down to whole foods to get some. I usually go for short-grain brown rice, because it is cheaper, lower-calorie and higher in fiber than other kinds of rice, but I decided to splurge and get brown basmati.

And as I ate my dinner (and breakfast and lunch today), I realized: IT WAS ALWAYS BASMATI. I had always liked basmati rice. The switch had been too subtle; I didn't lose my love of rice, I had just stopped buying the kind I liked! So no more bland and boring short-grain brown rice. BASMATI, I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN.