How to Make Rice: Why White Rice Matters

Can I just say, y'all know I like to show y'all all the things, but I just can't. I can't show you my crazy table. You're already seeing some of the dirty dishes. I won't even show you what's behind the camera. But today I'm about to make some rice, and I want to talk to you about making rice because it's simple, it's important, but it's not about the rice. It's about what rice means in my house. It's been a crazy week. It's been a crazy month. We've been eating out too much, so So I am determined by God. I am determined to make dinner tonight. So before I show you a little video, before I give you some background on why rice matters, I figured I'd show you how to make rice. Why? Because some of y'all told me you don't know how. So this is going to be quick. And then I'm going to tell you the meaning of life through rice. Get you a pan. Simple. I need you if you're cooking for— I'm cooking for 5. If you're cooking for 5, 3 cups of rice will do it. I'm lying, it's not 3, it's 2. It's 2.

2.

Uh, 1 and 2. What you now need is 3 cups of water. Y'all, this is easy. I don't understand why people tell me They can't make rice.

It's easy.

Some of y'all are out here fooling around with rice cookers and Instant Pots. I'm not mad at you. I'm just saying it's not necessary. Okay? All you do is take this, pour it in here. Looky here. You ready to hear it? Here it go. That's it. You put it on the stove. You turn it on high. Alexa, set the timer for 25 minutes.

Good evening, Chrystal Hurst. 25 minutes starting now.

And you let her do her thing. The only thing that you have to listen for is for this to boil. That's it. That's it. As soon as it starts boiling, you're going to turn it down to low and you're just going to let it sit there. Let the stove do its trick. Let the top stay on. Let the steam do its work. And then you'll have rice. Just wait, I'll show you. But while we're waiting on the rice to cook, I got a little something I want to share with you. Y'all know every week I release a video. I try my best to give you encouraging content, but sometimes I just know that instead of me telling you, I need to show you.

So now you know how to make rice.

And now I'm going to tell you why white rice or brown rice, because this is brown, why it's important, why it matters.

Why every now and then you just need to break out a pot and make it yourself.

All right, y'all, here we go.

Hello, it's been a minute since I've gone live, and I'm not thinking I'll be on here long, but something happened tonight that I wanted to remember, and sometimes talking it out while it's flowing is helpful. So, um, I'm in my kitchen, it's not clean, and I'm going to go to bed. I'm gonna leave it dirty and I'm gonna tackle it in the morning. It's amazing. I could have made my 15-year-old clean it up, but then I would have had to stand over him and make sure he did it right, and I didn't want to do that. So to bed you go. My grandson is spending the night. He told me tonight that he came over and he was home, and so I have just now put him to bed. If you can hear, I don't know if you can hear the classical music playing in the background. We have an old, I'll show you, we have an old radio situation. It's an '80s thing. I'll show you. It's this thing right here. And so these are in all the rooms of the house and Much to my 15-year-old's chagrin, it's classical music. That's what's happening tonight. So JT told me he was home, and, um, I said, great. So put him in the bed, turned on the classical music. And I just thought, man, you know, this is what memories are made of. One day, maybe, my grandson will tell his children that he used to go to Chrissy's house because Chrissy's house was his second house. And that when he went to bed, he was listening to classical music. We grew up in a musical home. There was always something playing on a radio station or a CD or a record player. Um, had a piano. I believe in music. There are certain things, you know, that make home home, and music is one of those things for me. But that is actually not what I wanted to tell you about. I'm letting my peppermint tea steep. The other thing that was home for us was food. And so tonight my daughter calls me and she says, "Hey mom, can we come over tonight?" Sure. "Do you have food?" Yes, I do. So the thing is, I had food and not a ton, but you know, her kids are small, so it's okay. So they came over and then my friend Michelle stopped by and said, "Hey, I'm gonna go." She lives in a van, she's in an RV. And she said, "Hey, I'm gonna go get my groceries and then I'm gonna, I gotta get my food ready for tomorrow." I said, "Well, why don't you just cook your food here?" She said, "And dirty up your kitchen?" I said, "The more the merrier. Charis is coming over." So I pulled out the food that had been fixed for dinner tonight, was able to feed Charis, her children, her husband. At the same time, my girlfriend Michelle is in the kitchen cooking up a storm, making a mess. She's vegan. So she was cooking up pea protein and bok choy and savory oatmeal and all kinds of crazy things, and it was just chaos in here for a little bit. But that's not even what I want to tell you. At some point during the cooking, Michelle says to me, "Do you have white rice?" Now, at the moment she said, "Do you have white rice?" I thought, "I think I have white rice." And in my heart and in my soul, I thought, Am I that person that you just go to their house and you have white rice? Like, I just had it cooked in the fridge. So I go to the fridge, I pull it out, and I thought, am I that person? But I didn't say it. I handed her the leftover container of rice. A few minutes later, my daughter says, are we just going to pretend like you asked my mother for rice? And out the blue she just had white rice in her refrigerator. Are we gonna just skip over the fact that she just randomly had white rice cooked and available? And I thought, okay, somebody else noticed too that I'm that woman that has her grandson sleeping in a bed that's especially set aside for him. That I'm that woman that has a room that she just rearranged the bed so when her grandchildren come over they have their own room. That I'm that woman that her daughter, her husband, her children, and her best friend can all be over at the house at the same time creating chaos and it's amazing. I am the woman who currently right now— I'll show you— Currently, windows are filthy dirty in the best way because I give them window markers so that they can write on my windows. I bought the markers for them to do that. That I am the woman whose grandson says, "Hey Chrissy, can you give me a dollar?" I'm not giving you a dollar. Well, Chrissy, what do I have to do to get a dollar?

I said, well, find all those markers, put the tops back on them, make sure they work.

Here's a piece of paper. Put the tops back on them, and if you can clean all that up, I'll pay you a dollar.

Okay.

And I'm the woman who has white rice on tap in her refrigerator. So no, my kitchen is not clean and I don't care. My kitchen table is a disaster cuz we work and we eat there.

It's a problem.

Um, you know, I make a menu that I actually don't follow. But hey, that's Chrissy's house. Sometimes, y'all, it's the messy places and the simple things— white rice, windows with markers, lots of noise, dirty dishes— that makes home home. You got to decide. We got to decide what really matters. Major on the majors, minor on the minors. And sometimes when you pull some white rice out of the refrigerator, you realize, oh, this is what home is all about. This random white rice that I happen to have on hand. So life is short, y'all.

You know, short.

So you revel when the snow falls, and you enjoy a cup of tea when your house is quiet, and you fold your laundry as often as you can, go to bed with dirty dishes. And you just say, "This is life indeed." Life indeed is not what's on social media. Life indeed is not the best of what we show. It's not what we choose to put in the frame publicly. Life indeed is the fact that I had the most amazingly normal evening. I did not take not one picture. There weren't any videos. But when the youngest of the 4 grandchildren was about to leave, she's not even 2, and as she's walking out of the door, she says, "Mommy, hug Kwesi." Well, she can't say Kwesi quite yet. She said it sounds like "sissy." "Hug sissy." And she reaches for me. And actually, one day earlier this week, she told me, my daughter told me, Listen to what the baby just said. The baby said, "Sissy's house." And don't get it twisted, y'all. I'm not over here making cookies with the grandchildren. I do not babysit them every day, every other day, every week. I am not over here, you know, with babies on my lap and I'm not making my whole livelihood out of caring for my grandchildren, much to my daughter's chagrin. But to the degree that I can— Can we come over for dinner? Okay. So I want to make sure that you know that regular life is good life, that regular memories are good memories, that simple things— clean sheets on a bed put together just for you— is amazing. And that classical music that your teenager doesn't want to hear creates a memory, hopefully, that he'll never forget. So whoever you're supposed to be, whatever you love, whatever memories you want to create, and whatever you want to keep in your refrigerator Whether it's for you, for your spouse, for your children, for the people you're caregiving for, or for yourself. Home. It matters. And it's the simplest thing that will give you a sense of belonging.

Me?

My grandmother used to make me tea. If I was going to be really English about it, I'd add some milk, but not tonight. So what do I do in the evening when it's quiet? Most evenings I make some tea. Seems to calm me down, seems to be the right thing. You know what I do sometimes when I have a child who's up late studying, miserable because they have a paper due the next day? I'll walk up to them, I'll rub their back, and I'll say, would you like me to make you some tea? And the teenage boys or the teenage girls will kind of look at you like, what do you mean, tea? But if you rub them on their back and you look at them lovingly enough, they'll say okay. And when you serve them the tea and maybe put a a little bit of milk in it, they might just remember the sights and the sounds and the smells of home. We're out here, y'all, trying to create businesses and trying to create wealth and just trying to pay the light bill, and we forget about the power that we have to create amazing, beautiful, restful spaces for ourselves, to the place we come home to every day. That the power of creation, of memories, and of acceptance and love and belonging for your people or for you, it's at home. You should love every night when you get in your own bed. You should love when you turn out the lights and you smell kashès. Young Living diffuser for the win. I get up in the morning and I tell my son, you know what your job is? You turn on the music and you turn on the diffuser, or you light a candle, because sights and sounds and smells, they matter. He gives me a dirty look, but guess what else he does? He turns on the lights, he lights the candle, he turns on the diffuser, he turns on the music. And one day, here's what I know, in his own home he will do the same. So, Lisa McFlowery and Share, it's from '50s to now. Glad you joined me. Just thought I'd share White rice matters.

How are you spending your time? Better yet, how are you being intentional with your days? I created the Full Circle Planner to make sure that you were doing both of those well. It is a planner. It's an undated 90-day planner that lets you check off your to-do list while you also check on your soul. It's the best parts of a planner and a journal to make sure that you're getting things done, but also getting the things done that you actually really wanna do. So if you need a way to make sure you're moving your tasks forward while you're also creating a life that you love, the Full Circle Planner can do just that. Check it out. Go to thesisterscircle.com/planner to get a gift for yourself or a gift for a friend or a gift for the two of you to use together. The Full Circle Planner, y'all. Check it out. Okay, y'all, hope you enjoyed that.

The rice is done. The steam is good for your face.

Also, you just need to fluff up the rice a little bit. You might have a little water at the bottom, just a little bit, like not even an eighth of an inch, just a little smidgen of water. And that's it.

Look at this.

It's just great.

Moist rice.

Easy. You may have to leave it on for more than 25 minutes. What I do is I add a little black pepper and I add a little butter, but it's over there, so I'll add it later.

That's it.

While you're making your rice, you can make whatever else you want to make for dinner. Whatever meat, you can sauté your vegetables, all that. Keep it simple. But apparently white rice is filling.

White rice is a good carb.

That's not white. I keep saying white. It's brown. And, uh, it finishes a meal, but it's simple. Most of the time, the things that you're trying to do to make family memories, to enjoy the time with your friends, to to create a life that's meaningful, you're overcomplicating it. You're overcomplicating it. What is in your hands that's simple, that you can do consistently, that you can do honorably, that you can do and enjoy? Just do that and stop trying to make things hard. Life is hard enough. So make yourself some brown rice, put it with some sautéed chicken, some broccoli, Maybe you want to get fancy and put it with some beef stroganoff, but keep it simple and enjoy your life.