The Rice Cooker

Once upon a time, I got married and received a fabulous rice steamer, exactly like this one pictured here, from a generous guest. We used the cooker for years to steam rice and various vegetables and we lived happily ever after. Until one fateful day, I dropped a can of stewed tomatoes (a really big can of them) on the glass lid and it smashed into a million, sad, super sharp, shards of pointy glass.

We recovered, slowly, from our shock and dismay over the destruction of the cooker. Being the cheapskates that we are occasionally - and no doubtedly we were still in mourning which must have affected our judgment- we decided that rice consumption was not high on our food needs list. We dropped around $40 on a cheap model rice maker that appeared to be functional. This was a ruse! The people that made the rice cooker make things like drills, power saws and electric knives so how could they mess up a rice cooker? A HA! They sure can and boy-howdy did they ever!

This replacement model, not nearly as nice as the first cooker we had, was horrible. It did terrible things...

• The handles got too hot resulting in the loss of my fingerprints on more than one painful occasion (Upside, I am able to commit crimes with wild abandon);



• The thing spit and sputtered like a dying harpooned whale being chased by 19th century whalers (Upside, I was inspired to re-read Moby Dick);



• The rice it did manage to cook developed a starchy crust on top and was a sticky mess on the bottom (Upside, we ate less carbs);



• The humidity the cooker spewed forth was enough to make my hair curl and the wallpaper peel. (Upside, no one had respiratory problems in our house for a few years, the wallpaper was easy to remove and I am the envy of all my friends for my easy to obtain curly locks).

But now, drumroll, I got a shiny, brand-spankin' new rice cooker for Christmas. The dragon could be retired!

But who ever throws anything away? Even something that doesn't work? My brother and his wife were lucky enough to spend the holiday with us and they are now the proud owners of the dragon masquerading, steaming water spewing, rice starchy nightmare mess that was our rice cooker.

Tim did nothing to help with the gifting of the cooker- in fact he nearly derailed it. He tried to tell the rice cooking tale of woe, but I glossed it over like nothing had ever happened and the rice cooker was packed away and is now safely on its way to Georgia. I think it's humid enough there that they might not notice the spewing.

In case you want to buy a rice cooker, there's lots of advice out there to help you avoid a nightmare dragon purchase. I even found a blog devoted to picking your rice cooker. How lucky is that?