Pineapple Rice adventures

Tonight Grant and I will be attending a dinner potluck at our friend's house. We love hanging out with S & M, so we are extremely glad to be joining them and meeting their other friends P & H.

Originally when I heard this was a potluck dinner I got excited- I love making food and sharing it out. Then I was told that H is vegan, so I needed/should make something vegan friendly. No problem, I'm not vegan so its a bit more tricky for me, but I am sure I can find something good. Happened to have a package of Seitan in my fridge, so I went on a search on my favorite recipe blog (http://www.101cookbooks.com/) for something good, and what I found was a recipe for Pineapple Rice. (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/pineapple-rice-recipe.html)

Looked at the ingredients and I had pretty much everything I needed to make it already on hand with the exception of a very few things. One glitch in the matrix- it calls for brown rice. This isn't hard for your average bear, but I only started cooking with brown rice for the first time this week when I made the Spanish Rice Casserole (amazing!!) a few nights ago. Having never had to just cook a batch of brown rice, I was a bit intimidated. Thank gods for Google. Looked up instructions, kinda blended the two I found and wa-la, cooked brown rice to let cool. Only thing I am slightly concerned about it the mushiness of the rice- I hate when brown rice is too hard still, but this rice ended up very soft, I think next time I will lessen the water and cook time by just a bit to try to get it perfect.

Fast forward a couple of hours and with a bit of blending, chopping, sauteing and stirring, I now have a giant pot of Pineapple Rice, extra dressing/sauce in a jar to be heated for when we serve it, and the toppings. It tastes good, but is still a bit mushy. Hopefully everyone will be so happy with the taste that they will excuse the mush-factor. If not, we may all be walking to the nearest vegan friendly restaurant for dinner.