Perfect Baked Brown Rice

This is Alton Brown's technique for brown rice, and I think it's the only way to make brown rice! I make a batch every Sunday to keep on hand for the week. 

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups brown rice,  medium or short grain
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (optional)
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the rice into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.
Bring the water, butter, and salt just to a boil. Once the water boils, pour it over the rice, stir to combine, and cover the dish tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake for 1 hour.
After 1 hour, remove cover and fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately.

Note: I marked the salt and butter as optional because I don't use them.  The rice tastes fine to me without them, but I know some people will want to add one or both. 

Budget Challenge!

As I mentioned in my last update, my family moved towards a more real and less processed way of eating late last year.  This did amazing things for our health and well-being, but, unfortunately, translated into an enormous increase in our grocery budget.  In the last 3 months of 2011 we spent over $700 on groceries each month, approximately double what we had been spending!

I admit, I did nothing to try and keep the budget down.  I did not do much meal planning, I didn't specifically shop the sales, and I purchased whatever I needed or wanted at whatever time I wanted it.  I think it worked out OK for us that way.  In a sense it was a bit of a grace period to learn what worked for us.  Learning a new way of shopping, cooking and eating was enough to tackle, it would have been harder if I had added in strict budget limitations. 

I started 2012 with a few intentions, one of which was to do more meal planning, give more thought to my shopping list, and get the grocery budget back under control.  In January we spent $550 on groceries, definitely an improvement, but still not where I would like us to be. 

Which brings us to February.  For the month of February I've decided to scale back, eat what we have on hand, and spend only $200.  I started the month with close to $100 in gift cards to a local grocery store, a $50 prepaid Visa debit card and about $50 cash.  This is all I will be able to spend this month. 

I stopped by a few stores yesterday, and soon I'll work on a post about what I purchased, and what we will be eating this week!  I can already tell this really will be a challenge, but I'm determined!