Rice

I found out that rice matters at Alice's solstice party one year.  I took a mouthful of the most beautiful and delicately fragrant rice, adorably short-grained, startlingly white, and then had the rice epiphany as the little grain pearls rolled around on my tongue and made me feel like I was eating a mouthful of teeny weeny baby toes.  Without hurting any actual babies.  Oddly, the rice reminded me very much of babies, which is never a bad thing. There was something about that indefinable mother's milk smell and the indescribable texture of baby skin.  And then I bit into the rice, and it had a pleasantly firm, toothsome feel.  I wanted to forsake the rest of the food: (tho of course i didn't) like Alice's tofu aioli (yes, tofu can be delicious! not just tolerable, but delicious.  if you add enough olive oil) and her Copper River Salmon grilled in a packet atop lemon grass and doused in Pernod.  Or her plum tart.  Or the big bowl of puffed Cheetos.  I didn't forsake the rest of the food for a few more bowls of rice, but I dreamed about that rice for years, a short grained sushi variety, but wasn't actually empowered enough to make great rice in my own home.  Then when I met Mikilani and ate delicious rice at her house, I finally determined to find my own delicious rice, and to no longer settle for an side dish with a mediocre texture and flavor.  That led me to First Oriental in Orem.  I'm sorry, but if you live in Utah Valley, you have to go to Orem to get good rice.  So make a list of everything you have to do in Orem and just get it over with.  Then come back to whatever cute place you live in and get out your rice cooker prepare to never eat Calrose again.

And let me know if you think my baby toe metaphor was on the mark or not.