[amelie77]

I found a new rice a roni at walmart made from whole grains flavored as roasted garlic italiano. here are the ingredients: parboiled long grain brown rice, orzo (macaroni product made with whole wheat flour) autolyzed yeast extract, natural flavors, salt, garlic, olive oil, butter (cream), nonfat milk, red bell pepper, parsley, parm cheese, whey, cultured nonfat milk, sunflower oil, soybeans

1 cup prepared is 270, 2.5 fat, 41 carbs, 3 fiber, 1 sugar, 6 protein

What's the opinion chicks?

[pearshape]

I think it looks OK. Sounds good, actually. I'll have to check next time I'm at walmart.

[lotusblossom02]

omg that sounds amazing. will have to look for it next week when i'm on ph2 o.o

[amelie77]

well, in the good/bad carbs book, I found whole wheat macaroni as limited, which would be the orzo, so I am going to assume that I can eat this once a week and it will be acceptable. Anyone disagree?

[Barb0522]

I'm not sure about the rice being parboiled. Does anyone know if that equates to instant? The only other thing I see is the cream but at least there is more olive oil than cream. Laurie, what do you or Ruth think?

[Schatzi]

I don't know about Ruth or Laurie.. but, parboiled rice is converted rice. It's a "compromise" to facilitate quicker cooking... The brown rice is steamed before it's husked, and causes the grains to absorb many of the nutrients from the husk.

Quick cooking brown rice is on the Avoid list and orzo is a no no.. So from a purist point of view, it doesn't make the cut...

[beachgal]

Yeah...the orzo, if it was totally whole wheat, would be okay...on a limited basis. But those tricky little marketers..."made with whole wheat flour" is different from "made from whole wheat flour" and they know it! They hope we take the bait and assume it's the later when they say the former. Chances are, the orzo is made mostly with enriched white flour and has some whole wheat thrown in. I looked at this yesterday and did a little drooling, then put the box back (after I wiped my drool off, of course... ).

Their whole grain version that is a chicken flavor looked pretty safe...like Barb was saying, butter isn't a great ingredient, but the ones at the very end of the list are usually so minute in amount that they aren't too worrisome to me. I tried finding the nut'l info online, but the rice-a-roni website doesn't have the whole grain stuff up yet.

Great question, though, amelie! If you really think it sounds good, I'd try making your own. Barb uses a fairly quick cooking rice that I can never remember the name of (is it converted, Barb?) or you can make a huge batch of brown rice and freeze it in portions for easy serving later. I know it's a pain to wait an hour for it to cook. Anyways, see what you can do on your own...I bet you can make something even yummier! You can use WW spaghetti, broken up into tiny pieces and cooked to substitute for Orzo...it would taste pretty much the same.

[Barb0522]

I use Uncle Ben's Converted Rice. It is a long grain white converted rice and is listed as Good in the GFGC book. It takes 20 minutes to cook but I have sometimes made up extra and then frozen it to reheat later. I prefer to make my own instead of using mixes since mixes are usually very high in sodium even if they did have allowed ingredients.

[amelie77]

Another reason I thought it was okay was that it takes 25 minutes to cook, so it isn't instant. I did go ahead and fix it last night, and ate 1/2 cup. It was my only grain serving for the day, so it didn't trip me up. It was really good. I may use it occasionally on phase 3. Thanks ladies for all your help! Sorry to get hopes up!

[batmomm2000]

I have a delish cheesy orzo recipe that isn't SBD at all but I made it the other day with brown rice instead and it was certainly better than nothing. Basically saute up garlic and onion/shallot in olive oil. Prepare brown rice according to package directions only use chicken broth instead of water. Once it's just about finished cooking, grate in some fresh parmesean cheese. So creamy and rich. You could do the same with couscous too.