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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, February 20, 2005

OLD-TIME TALK STORY
Memories of Rice

 •  An homage to rice
 •  Poetry: Growing With Rice
 •  Contemporary, winner: Few Things in Life Are as Constant or Comforting
 •  Contemporary, runner up: Mommy's Fried Rice
 •  Readers' thoughts: Poetry in the Grain

Devika Follosco

Winner: Devika Follosco, Honolulu

When we were growing up, my mom always bought rice in 100-pound bags. My dad said a meal wasn't a real meal without rice. On rare Saturdays, when we had soup and sandwiches for lunch, there was always the option to add rice to the soup. Rice was rarely wasted. If there was leftover rice from dinner, we had fried rice for breakfast.

Playing in my grandparents' yard in the afternoons, the aroma of chocolate often distracted us. We'd run into the house through the back door, and there in the kitchen would be my grandfather, making rice pudding for us. He used the leftover rice from lunch, added water to it and put it on the stove. Before it got to the gooey stage, he'd add evaporated milk, sugar and chocolate powder — Ghirardelli's from that square orange box with the round lid, which needed to be wedged open with the butter knife. His rice pudding was more delicious than the pre-packaged chocolate and vanilla puddings available in the stores today.

For our frequent picnics to the beach, a standard finger food was rice balls — a variation of the traditional musubi. My mom put ume or tuna in the center, with or without a strip of nori on the outside. When she made sushi rolls, they departed from tradition and were stuffed with all kinds of tidbits — eel, watercress, daikon strips, tuna, carrots cooked in shoyu. The rolls were about 2 inches in diameter and bursting with flavor and color.

My dad moistened leftover rice to make paste. I remember him cutting thin strips of bamboo to form frames for kites. He'd use colorful cartoon pages of the Sunday news for the body. He then meticulously folded the edges over the frame and added thin smears of rice paste to attach the paper. The tail was made from bright cloth strips from my mom's sewing projects. The ball of string was carefully knotted pieces, much of it collected from disassembled rice bags.

My mom and grandma used the rice bags to make dish towels. When my mom passed away a few years ago, my sisters and I divided up the dish towels with their faded pictures and words. They are still our favorites even after 40-plus years of use.

My parents respected rice. That's the only way I can describe it. We were not allowed to lean on or play around the unopened 100-pound bag of rice leaning against the kitchen wall.

Once, when I left some rice on my plate, my dad told me not to waste food. He told me to think about how much time and effort it took for each of these grains of rice to get to my plate. He mentioned the planting, the length of the growing season, the harvesting and the journey to the table via my mom's hands, cleaning and cooking. Was all of that just so I could throw it away?

I was very young when he related all that to my brothers, my sisters and me. It's left a lasting impression about perspective, and respect.