Allow Me to Explain

This weekend was CRAZY. Friday I went to Austin, well, first San Marcos for pizza with Mom and Kitty, and then Austin. We shopped, we ate some more, we looked at pictures and picture frames, we straightened hair. Saturday morning Mom and I went to a cake tasting for my wedding cake... cake for breakfast! Then Saturday afternoon I had my bridal shower! KayLynn, Rachel, and Jamie were the organizers and they did a fabulous job. Pictures to come, I have to wait to get them from other people since my camera battery was dead :(.

Tonight I have been doing some experimenting. At Kitty's Friday night I was eating some of her "Quakes" which are just rice cakes with flavoring powder on them, right? Seems like it would be pretty simple to make, right? Wrong. I got started earlier this afternoon (after I finished up Hatchet, pretty good book, btw) googling "how to make crisp rice." Not much there. Next "puffed rice." Still nothing. The googling went on for some hour and a half after which I gathered that they do it alot in southeast Asia but they use black sand to cook it? And no one seemed to know what kind of rice to use. And some of them said you had to use oil and some said you could just "crisp" it in the oven after you make regular rice. You can't. I tried. Following is the before and after of that adventure:Failure #1. So I pressed on. Several tutorials suggested frying the rice. Or frying rice first boiled, then dried. Some said the moisture content had to be just right in the rice. How the heck do you test moisture content in partially cooked rice?! Anyhow, I tried deep frying it, totally dry and partially cooked. But to no avail. Following is the fried rice. And just for kicks I tried frying brown rice and barley as well (also failures):

Yuck, right? Not to mention this whole quest was to find a way to crisp rice so I could make healthy snacks that I knew all the ingredients of. Deep frying wasn't really in that plan. So you were maybe hoping that I could tell you after all of this how to make crisp rice. Too bad, I haven't figured it out yet. Maybe next week. In the meantime, though, I found a really cool machine that does it for you; take a look.

I tend to be pretty persistent (some may say stubborn) when I want to figure something out, so hopefully I'll be able to figure this one out and let you know. How cool would it be to make rice crispy treats from rice you popped yourself? Or use it in homemade granola? Just nod and smile.