Ode to a rice cooker. . .

O WILD Spanish Rice, thou curse of mine recipe drafts
Thou over whose clumping tackiness Chats frowns
Are whipped into shape by Japanese kitchen-crafts,

Basmati, and jasmine, and white, and husky brown,
Stickyness-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who stovetopest to their soggy veggie Korma mound

The paddy's bounty, when they lie overcooked and dried,
Each like a corpse within its husk, until
Mine gleaming Zojirushi of Nippon arrived

Her clarion o'er the crowded kitchen, and fill
(Driving sweet aromas like flocks to feed in air)
In tasty grains and delicate textures I thrill;

Good appliance, which art storable everywhere;
Cooker and warmer; hear, O hear!

(apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley)

I haven't blogged about cookery in a while, mostly because I've made no discoveries lately.

Honestly, I can't cook rice to save my life. Since Chats is a vegetarian, that's a bit of a problem because rice is a companion to a lot of Asian and Indian dishes. I finally threw my hands up in disgust and decided to get a rice cooker. A man's got to know his limitations, as Dirty Harry says, and one of mine is that I just can't make decent stovetop rice.

After a lot of research and weighing of costs and benefits, I ended up with a Zojirushi. It's more expensive than the run-of-the-mill cookers you see at Target, but I'm thrilled with it, for the following reasons:

• Tasty flavor bring happiness to my mouth!


• It's got fuzzy logic.


• It's compact, so it plays nice in our cramped kitchen. The cord retracts and there's a handle, so when not in use it's up on a shelf.


• The steam that comes out of it makes the kitchen smell wonderful.


• Cooking times only vary by a few minutes. It starts a digital display countdown at about 12 minutes until the rice is ready, so I can stage other stuff.


• It quite happily makes oatmeal and breakfasty-type cereals.


• You can cook rice along with veggies and such for making Jambalaya-type one-pot dishes if you want, the fuzzy logic somehow figures it all out.


• There's a timer, so I can set it to have hot oatmeal when I get up, or rice ready when I get home.


• If I'm delayed for whatever reason, it just switches into a keep-warm mode.


• It plays cheery tunes when it starts cooking (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star), and when the rice is ready.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that the digital clock is in twenty four hour mode, so non-military types and their spouses will be doing simple mental math in the evening.