There is no such thing as yellow rice! I am devastated! Another bubble burst. Here I am, several decades old, and I thought that like white rice, brown rice, and the exotic black (or forbidden) rice, yellow rice was a thing. It is not. I cannot go into a grocery and find a bag that lists yellow rice in its ingredients. Yellow rice is actually some form of white rice with something in it that makes it yellow; (like turmeric and/or sometimes even food coloring).

I was planning to grill some jerk chicken and shrimp and we wanted to try yellow rice as an accompaniment. I have found a marvelous way to cook rice dishes in a paella pan on the grill to add a little smokiness and a unique texture. So I went to the store in search of yellow rice. I found a bag that said "yellow rice" but when I looked at the ingredients it was white rice with stuff in it. So there I am clogging up the rice aisle, researching rice on the inter-webs, and what else do I find? Wild rice isn't a rice at all! It isn't even tangentially related! It is fake rice! I am more rice than wild rice because I have in-laws named Rice! Suddenly this whole rice thing has become a full-blown conspiracy!

I read labels. I started reading labels eight-and-a-half years ago because my heart cried out for more healthy fare. Like rice! And now look where it's taken me. Once again, I have been led astray by my heart. Duplicitous, conniving, Life-affirming muscle!

So there I still am, in the rice aisle, stamping my foot, muttering under my breath, staring at my phone, and clutching my chest; but at least, (like a percutaneous coronary intervention), I have unclogged the rice aisle. I fear doing more research. I may find Uncle Ben is not a real person. Or that Rice University is an actual university. Woe is me. I spend a lifetime believing something, only to find it a hoax. A cruel, malicious, deceitful lie that I see now was partially created and then perpetuated in my own head so I would feel better about my health believing I was consuming a whole food. Alas, Twas merely a masquerade.

I suppose I may take some comfort in the fact that there was an actual whole food swimming amongst the added ingredients, but I still feel cheated because I did not realize the added ingredients; (food coloring? Come on...). I liked yellow rice. I still like yellow rice. Or more accurately put, I like Basmati rice with turmeric. My Basmati rice with turmeric was the perfect accompaniment the other night; but I had a hard time calling it yellow rice. And now what am I going to call my wild rice? Long grain and Zizania would cause confusion and perhaps even some consternation amongst dinner guests; (though I like the name). I know, I know... "A rose by any other name..." and all that. But that's not the point. The point is that I believed in yellow rice and now... well, I have already expressed my disappointment.

And what's more?! I have discovered that there are more than 40,000 varieties of rice. 40,000! And none of them are yellow rice! Who knew? I am familiar with only a handful, knowing also that there are 3 types of grain: short, medium and long. For those of us who are devoted fans of a basic long grain white, how am I to know a short grain Valencia? Until this week I was not even aware of short grain Valencia; yet after speaking knowingly (and smugly?) about my paella pan, here I find that Valencia is a Spanish variety often used for paella. I am ignorant. A lost soul wandering these vast stores of rice... My eyes have been opened to possibility...

But how can I spread myself so thin? I have grown old adhering to that aforementioned basic long grain white rice. I am so blind as to have thought that I was being daring experimenting with yellow rice when unbeknownst to me I was still just being drawn to my basic long grain white rice. There is no possible way for me to know 40,000 varieties. Perhaps I am better to stay with what I know, maybe adding some depth through further exploration of other popular varieties of white such as Jasmine or Arborio or Blue Rose or Bombo. The greater difficulty is in handling the distress caused by the crumbling of my carefully constructed, yet childishly simplistic understanding of the ways of rice.

The ways of rice are manyfold. There is not one True path, but I have spent so many decades now habitually serving the same basic white rices, that this recent foray into the nonexistent yellow rice has not convinced me that the "only" rice worth serving is white rice, (despite the fact that yellow rice is really white rice), but instead has shown me that the only rice worth serving is the one (of 40,000) that is served well; and to serve a rice well, I believe one must have an affinity for that rice and also, (in that moment), acknowledge the validity of the other 39,999 rices also being served well all over the world. So when I seek comfort I will likely choose to serve a basic long grain white rice, but now that I know of this multitude of rices, I am no longer very comfortable with comfort. Because I am now aware of this complexity, I must explore this complexity. I can no longer swear allegiance to rice because I will never know all the ways of rice; and it feels somewhat impotent to swear allegiance to 1 rice out of 40,000. What if my rice is not the best rice for my personal tastes? Or my personal health? What if my rice is merely an ingrained habit from which I have learned to like basic long grain white, but in actuality I have tricked my taste buds into a delusion of devotion? These are disturbing (but necessary) thoughts.

So I have been converted; from smug conviction to thoughtful skepticism. And despite the heartache, I am better for it. And once I have caught my breath I suppose I should find out if red beans are a thing because I did a preliminary search and it appears that it is one of hundreds of varieties of the common bean, and that many people believe it to be the same as or interchangeable with the kidney bean. Heresy! And more heartache...