Rice Cooker

I finally found a world-class rice cooking device that met both my qualifications for price and Butterfinger’s standards for perfection. Now we will be able to cook rice the proper way instead of ingesting the instant stuff they mistakenly call “rice”. This thing, manufactured by the one and only Wolfgang Puck, has all the bells and whistles – steaming tray, measuring cup, warming feature, and my personal favorite, the flattened rice scooping spoon. What fun is making your own, real rice when you do not have the Asian inspired mashed scoop to go along with it?!

I was going to pick up a bag of rice at Sam’s club on my way back to surprise Butterfinger with the new gadget, but would you believe they only sell 50 pound bags of the starchy grain? I did some quick mental math – Butterfinger = 7-10 bowls per week + Me = 5-7 bowls per week, averaging about 2-4 cups per bowl – I estimate it would take us about 638 days to eat that much rice at our current rate of consumption. Who knows where life might lead us during that time! Moving a 25 pound bag of rice along to our next destination is not high on my priority list, call me crazy.

In lieu of starting my own rice paddy farming in the backyard I guess I will have to go to a store with regular sized goods and find some rice with which to test our new machine. We already had some carrots that were steamed to perfection, but it just is not quite the same as eating the dish for which the little pot was made. Seems like I am not really doing it justice stuffing it full of veggies, when really it is carbs it craves. All this talk is making me hungry, time to finish off the instant rice and step up into the real world.

Butterfinger’s Tuna Rice

• 1 can name-brand solid white albacore tuna

• half a bowl of white rice

• Soy Vay (a teriyaki-type sauce)

• Sriracha (also prounounced Siriachi or Sirachi; hot sauce from Thailand)

• freshly ground white pepper

• Category 3 (hot sauce from the Outer Banks)

• Kikoman Soy Sauce (sometimes)

• any other condiments that are laying around/look good at the time (this includes unused hot sauces from the burrito stand, salsas)