Rice & Tomato Dish

Being a poor college student is catching up to me; I haven't been able to go grocery shopping in the two weeks since my parents came out due to a lack of funds. Unfortunate as this is, it does give me the opportunity to be more creative in my cooking skills(lest I be eating white rice plain). Furthermore, since my mother was kind enough to bring me some home-canned tomatoes when she came out to visit, I decided that a nice rice & tomato dish sounded nice, despite the fact that I had no idea how to cook such a thing. This leads to the natural conclusion: mix alot of stuff in a bowl and see if it turns out well. Thankfully, it did.

Rice & Tomato Bake

1 cup long grain rice, any variety(wild rice would actually be very nice)
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 large Onion, chopped
5-6 cloves Garlic, minced

1 tbsp Spanish Paprika
2 tsp Cilantro
3/4 tsp Thyme
3/4 tsp Black Pepper
1 tsp Sea Salt

1 pint jar of tomatoes(canned tomatoes are unsafe; if you don't can tomatoes yourself use about 2-3 large tomatoes instead, cutting them up and stewing them beforehand)
1 1/2 2 cups water

Mix everything in a large metal bowl, making sure the spices are stirred in very well. Start on the lesser side of the water, you can add in more later. Put it in a baking pan and bake at 350˚ for around 1 hour, 15 minutes, checking on it every 25 minutes or so to make sure it hasn't dried out. If the water level seems too low, just pour more water on and mix it all up well; after it bakes for another five minutes nobody will be able to tell that you ever did this anyway. It's finished when the rice is nice and soft.

As for the spices, the amounts of each can be increased or decreased as to preference; I didn't actually measure anything that was going into the dish besides the rice. Oregano and rosemary would both be fairly nice, and hot pepper could be added if an extra kick was desired.

Happy Cooking :)