Stupid Hippy Rice

As we all know, I'm a bit of a food quality snob. I prefer to shop at the family-run market near our house for basics, and hit the european open-air market, and one of the many specialty importers for more exotic fare.

Food is my hobby. It looks kind of funny on the hobbies section of my resume, but it's true. I like shopping for food, visiting farms, watching food being prepared, making food, tasting it, smelling it, discussing it... you get the idea.

WHAT I DO NOT LIKE ARE ANGOUMOIS GRAIN MOTHS!!!

Turns out that some of the hippy brown rice had some bugs in it. They grew up and infested the entire kitchen. Conveniently for them, we keep all grain products in the same cabinet, in what apparently are not air-tight tupperware.

E and I threw out quite a bit of rice, dried peppers (the red decorative ones, really hot--wouldn't you think the bugs would stay away from those?), and oatmeal. Thankfully, the polenta, dried porcini, and farro were safe due to superior packaging.

It's really quite disgusting--I opened the rice pseudo-tupperware to make risotto while the garlic and onions were simmering in butter. I was almost salivating from the smell when I saw an infestation of 2 dozen insects, very upset that I had disrupted their home. Uggghhh...I guess when the hippies say no pesticides, they really mean it. The realization that the bugs we'd been seeing around the house were coming from our food was gross.

There are two good things to come from this, however:

#1 -- farro "risotto" is simmering on the stove. I've often wondered how using farro (spelt) in place of rice would work.

#2 -- I've wanted to branch out and buy some new rice varieties for a while now, but couldn't in good conscience because of the several pounds we already owned. That's no longer a problem...