Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice - Original Long Grain (8.8 oz.)
Item Purchased: Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice - Original Long Grain (8.8 oz.)
Location Purchased: 7-Eleven / 1350 S. Halsted / Chicago, IL
Price: $2.19 + tax
Review: I’ve eaten a lot of different things straight out of plastic bags before. Candy, potato chips, nuts and guacamole. Once I even put a bunch of peanut butter inside of a ziplock sandwich bag to snack on during a long day at work. Never have I purchased, cooked and eaten rice straight from the bag. Sure, rice comes packaged in plastic bags all of the time, but usually it is up to me to add the water and find a suitable container to boil it in.
No longer!
Thanks to the miracles of modern convenience, I can simply run down the street to the 7-Eleven, buy a bag of rice (and water), microwave it for ninety seconds and enjoy. No pot or extra water needed. Weird!
Uncle Ben’s has been one of the best selling brands of rice in America since the 1950s, when the Mars corporation bought the company known as Converted Rice, Inc. Converted Rice was known for preparing parboiled white rice products that retain many of the nutrients found in most brown rices. Even way back before the mascot, Uncle Ben, was slapped on every package (purported, by the company, to be an African American rice grower from Texas, but has been criticized as being an offensive Uncle Tom portrayal of a black man), Converted Rice Inc. had been making rice cooking a convenient task. It seems that convenient isn’t convenient enough, now that we have these small single serving pouches to make our rice in. It used to be that even an idiot could make rice, but now it is almost to the point where you have to be an idiot to make rice.
The rice, itself, comes out tasty, but a bit rubbery and bland. I bought the original flavor, but even rice has more flavor than this stuff had. To remedy this, I poured my almonds over the rice, pillaged some soy sauce packets from the takeout graveyard in the office and crystallized my meal heavily with salt. This made for a filling and strange meal.
I’ve made it a point to seek out all of the odd convenience foods my local 7-Eleven has to offer. It amazes me that there are people who sit in office cubicles and labs all day long thinking of ways to make quick food preparation even faster. As I see the variety of crap 7-Eleven has on its shelves every day, I am more and more convinced that these scientists and thinkers are on the payroll of the store. Do I have to mention their root beer float contraptions?
So, while you would not find me picking up an item like “microwave in the pouch” rice on a regular grocery visit, my daily office boredom and fascination with our wasteful culture of convenience tempts me to make purchases such as these. I must not be the only one with said fascination. Amazon.com has an . The wonders never cease.
Rating: 2.75 / 5
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