Grated palm sugar is awesome.

yeah...my fathers wife make 'sticky rice' with it which I like, but apparently it's a poor persons desert. If that's the case, rich people are stupid is all I can say.

white rice has very little nutritional value. But I used to like maple syrup on it as a kid; and I love rice pudding!

I put sugar and cinnamon on my sticky white rice. Or used to. My hubby doesn't like white rice, so we mostly do long grain wild rice.

Cloud, rice of any kind including white (in particular) is high in carbohydrates and it's also got a good helping of fibre. It also has protien and some B vitamins. That's a big part of the reason why some people manage to subsist on rice alone.

I think they put those B vitamins in there by fortifying it. I love white rice, and tho' brown rice has more fiber and more nutrition . . . I can't like it much.

Yeah, brown rice has 3X the fiber, which you generally need much more than the sprayed on vitamins in white rice.

We have pretty comprehensive food labeling laws in Australia and I've just looked on two different packets of rice in the cupboard and the only ingredient listed is rice.

I don't know if maybe vitamins are added for US consumers, and it's possible there are brands with vitamin additives available here, but you can certainly purchase rice with no additives what so ever here.

Apple pie, anyone?

Yes we do too have brown sugar, and Demerara sugar too. It is, or was, a quirk of US sugar laws that raw sugar is supposed to be refined to pure sugar and then have molasses whipped back in to make brown sugar.

I used to do that with our kitchen blender. I do it less nowadays. If you figure you need your brown sugar to get darker brown, blend in another tablespoon (15ml) of molasses to a cup of the stuff. Very molasses-laden brown sugar should be kept in a tight container.