Garlicize your Rice

Last Saturday we went for an international buffet. Whoa….check out the spread of food! Too much for me to eat, tho I took only a pinch of each dish. There were at least 6 different types of sashimi, raw oysters & scallops, oyster rockerfella (U gotta try it to understand it, dude), at least 12 different salads, snails, cheese & crackers, prawns with flowers (so amazing! They put a prawn with some unidentified yellow sauce, & a pretty flower on a tiny dish, & u eat everything up – except the dish, of course – I took a photo of it too…), broth….I haven’t even started on the main courses yet! And that included some beef dish (I forget the name) where the roast beef is served under a pastry & smothered in mushroom sauce, Thai chicken stew, Chinese veggies, potatoes, fish, pork chop, pasta….. *phew* Me being a fan4 tong3, I just had to have my food with rice. No rice, no nice. Where’s the rice?

“There’s fried rice at the end,” he said.
So off I went on a rice pilgrimage. It was plain white rice fried with (horror!) garlic. (Post-dinner conversation should not take the form of “Hello! How are you? Have you had dinner? Haha!") But anyway, I had no choice but garlicized rice. So garlicize my rice I did.

Brought it back to my seat with the pork chop with gravy, the veg, etc… ate it with the rice, and.... WOW!!!! I’ve never had such nice rice ever! Humble plain white rice, with just oil & garlic & you have a wonder of a dish. No need for fanciful meat, or herbs, or veg. just the humble, little bit of garlic (which I’m not a big fan of, if you’ve guessed by now).

I said enthusiastically, “This rice is NICE!”

He glared at me.

In an effort to convince him, I continued, “I mean, it’s the most delicious rice I’ve ever tasted!”

His glare intensified.

“It’s just plain white rice, but with 2 simple ingredients that you’d use in every dish – garlic & oil – they produced something so…amazing!” I gushed. “You’d never expect it. It’s as if there’s some secret ingredient they’ve added. In fact, they’re probably using overnight rice.” Still no response. “It’s the best dish in this buffet!”

Ok, I think that did it for him. “I brought you all the way here & forked out $22 just so you can eat plain rice??!!”

But hey, if you add salt add vinegar, add power flower, of course the dish would turn out nice, right? And with all that time, effort, numerous ingredients, it’s understandable if the dish turns out well. In fact, if it doesn’t taste nice, something’s wrong…. But take some rice, and garlic and oil – both staple ingredients that people take for granted because they use it in every single dish – and whoala! Magic! A miracle! Even if the rice has been kept overnight, rice that some would deem unworthy to serve.

If a common, everyday garlic can do such wonders to boring white rice, what more can the all-sufficient, all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful Holy Spirit do to boring old me?

“If God can make something out of nothing, he can make something out of me.” -- Mother Theresa

Maybe it’s not so difficult to lead a miraculous life. Maybe leading a supernatural life is quite normal after all. Maybe a cannot-make-it life can also become whoala! Magic! A miracle!

Maybe?

Why not? Ask me.