mmm spoiled cabbage. *shudders*

I prefer plain steamed rice with most of the food that I eat. I like the rice to help cut the flavor of the sides I'm eating it with. I find having plain white rice gives a nice neutral base, especially when eating a variety of different sides. If the rice is flavored with something, I figure, sometimes it might not go well with a certain side dish or that there is nothing to help cleanse the palate for the next dish/bite.

It has never occurred to me to pour straight soy sauce on my steamed rice. That gives me the same feeling as eating a bowl of pasta slathered in ketchup, the ketchup just overpowers everything else. I have no problem with eating a rice dish covered with a soy sauce based side dish or having soy sauce mixed in my fried rice while it is cooking or with tamago rice, but straight soy sauce seems a bit too strong on white rice since I imagine it would soak up into the rice and leave every bite of rice tasting much too salty.

It's probably a California Style Hawaiian food thing. Oregon has some pretty gross "Hawaiian Food" which isn't really Hawaiian too. Most rice in Hawaii, rest. and otherwise is normal.

Sticky rice is a thai thing, hawaii has fried rice and brown riiiice and balut

I don't think it causes cancer either, but I was illustrating that people generally do not have a positive view of just putting soy sauce on white rice here, and looking back at the post you made and the link you put up, it seems to support that. I took MMM's comment about "no one putting soy sauce on rice" figuratively. I do not think he meant for it to be taken literally.

Covering it with senzai would be pretty surprising and definitely a new experience for me too. :D I think I`d pass on eating it after that...

Actually, though it does depend on the area, it`s usually called "seimai". The in-laws call it senmai, so I am guessing the same thing goes for your area too.

Usually the machines offer a bunch of different settings ranging from just taking the outside dustiness off all the way to just leaving the very center. The outer coating tends to be denser than the inside and deal with changes in temperature better. Once you`ve polished it, the rice slowly dries out completely and starts to form little cracks that make it sort of "melt" when you cook it. This is part of the reason that last year`s rice is usually thrown out - it tastes like crap when you cook it.

The seimaiki we have is this one. Ignore their suggested price - it`s insane. You can find it for about 8000~10000 at any normal electronics store (Yamada, Eiden, Joshin, 100man Volt if you`ve got those around there, etc). You can do up to 5 gou at once, and it`s a free adjustment so you can set it however you like.

I wasn`t debating whether there were some people out there who did indeed eat rice with soy sauce. I just seriously doubt that the practice came from the eating habits of Japanese during the occupation.
Prior to it being made into a completely liquid sauce (Heian era), there was a form of shoyu (forget the name at this moment) which retained the grain and which was eaten on rice or other things. It was a very high class food.

I was trying to point out that just because people say it isn`t eaten because it feels like a poor person`s food doesn`t mean that it ever WAS eaten as a poor person`s food - which would kind of make the probability of people eating it in the poor years after the war pretty low.

The only brown rice I've noticed in Hawaii is if you're
A) Asking for Brown Rice at a rest.
B) You just eat Brown Rice
C) You go to school and they give you disgusting brown rice.

Otherwise, it is white rice, which is more often seen, in my opinion, away from public school than brown rice. Fried rice is common, obviously as well.

.... why cheese?

I like my rice with furikake sometimes, but I like them most when they're mixed with dissolved sugar in brown rice vinegar. Yum!:rheart: