The Lazy Vegan

I bought a bag of the Uncle Ben’s Garden Vegetable Ready Rice. It proclaims “with peas, carrots, and corn”.

I didn’t really read the nutritional facts until I got it home.  Woah! 830 milligrams of sodium per serving, two servings per bag.  That wasn’t going to do!  I had some rice already made, so I mixed the two together.  At least, that cut the sodium level down.

I’m glad that I made vegetables to go with it.  I think there were 5 carrot pieces, 4 peas, and about 8 corn kernels in my serving.  Uncle Ben’s garden must be really wimpy if this is all that it can produce.

It was a tasty bag of rice without a plasticky taste.  It cooked well.  But, it had way too much sodium and didn’t live up to the Garden Vegetable name.  More vegetables, Uncle Ben!

I noticed that Target had a few varieties of Uncle Ben’s Ready to Serve Rice Mixes.  I bought a couple to test them out.

The first one I made was the “Whole Grain Brown Rice”.  It has no fat and only 15 mg. of sodium.  It cooked well.  The rice had that steamed texture and wasn’t clumpy.

The only thing I didn’t like is it’s mixed with oil.  Why do people cook rice with oil?  It makes it, well, oily.  The first night I ate it that way.  The second night I mixed it with Kashi Original Pilaf.  That worked well.  The rice texture was no longer oily.

Target only has 3 varieties, but I see on the Uncle Ben’s website that they sell many different types like Garden Vegetable, Jasmine, and Basmati.  I will probably buy more, but it will be something that I’ll mix with something else.  The oily texture is a turn off.

While roaming around Target the other day, I came across Kashi 7 Whole Grain Pilaf.  It comes in a microwavable bag and cooks up in 60-90 seconds.

I tried the Our Original 7 Whole Grain Pilaf.  It took about 70 seconds to cook in the microwave.  It was fluffy and had a good textured.  I mixed it up with a bunch of cooked vegetables and it made a pretty tasty meal.  Our Original only contains grains–nothing else added.

It comes in two other flavors:  Moroccan Curry and Fiery Fiesta.  Since I have a volcanic digestive tract, I decided against these two.  I don’t think I can handle it.

This is a good addition to the quick and easy meal category.  The bag makes two servings.  Mix it with some veggies and you might get three meals out of it.