A Stupid Ode to Stupid Brown Rice

Hello brown rice,
You are not delicious. You taste like a shoe. Your "mouth feel" is that of twice-chewed sweat socks. While filling and "healthy", you offer no enjoyment to the event that is dining. Matching you with chicken does less than nothing for me, as your bland tastes do nothing but cancel each other out.

What happens when you add nothing with nothing? You get nothing.

That, Brown Rice, is how I feel about you.

I tried to eat you for dinner. I boiled you and watched you get all fluffy. I overcooked you, to be sure, but I may have improved your taste. And when I dressed you with a cooked chicken breast and chicken broth with mushrooms, your taste was only minimally improved.

Oh! How I tried to be psyched about you! How I would dream about supermodels who love you and live on your mushy goodness! "I shall feast like a model and my body will rejoice!" I thought.

And when I scooped you onto my plate, onto the place my delicious pasta used to live, I felt hopeful and confident! I shall eat nothing but brown rice and I shall be skinny!

But you tasted like a wet cardboard box. Luckily, you filled me up so thoroughly that I had no need to finish what was left on my plate. I scooped you into the drain with restrained glee.

But oh! You would not be so easily tossed away. With so much left in the pan, I unfortunately had no choice but to store the rest of you in a Tupperware, and you will sit in the refrigerator until tomorrow 'round lunch time when I shall meet you again.

And yet...and yet. Your nutritional value is second-to-none. Despite the high carbohydrate count, you offer me vitamins and nutrients that once I could only get in the form of eight pieces of pizza and a side of multi-vitamin.

Oh you strange, strange grain. You are so gross. So very, very gross. But as Tyra tells her stupid wanna-be models, "It's all brown rice and chicken and vegetables if you wanna lose lbs".

You know what I like more than eating you, Brown Rice? Everything. Well, not going to the gym, but pretty much everything else.

I wonder where our relationship will be in one week, Brown Rice. Will I have sworn off you and your empty promises to my taste buds forever, or will I have succumbed to your healthy charm and tasteless wit? You are easier to make than pasta, and that irony has not escaped me. Even when I make you wrong, you turn out so, so right.

You give, and you give, and you give. And it is all I can do to not throw you up. Especially when my roommate makes and eats buttery crescent rolls that melt on your tongue...how shall you live up to that? You cannot. And that's why I will likely be a happier person feasting on French fries than attempting to keep down the disgusting mushiness.

But lo! I will be skinny again. And because you are apparently a thing that skinny people "eat", I too shall eat. And I shall never be satisfied again!!!!!!