Danger! Man Cooking!

After getting tired of my complaints of not having enough time to cook, my mom recommended getting a rice cooker. Though the model of her choice was everything and a rice cooker. This Panasonic SR-TMB10 can cook white rice, brown rice, soups, slow cook, steam vegetables, and bake cakes (or at least some sort of such). Its older brother with model number 18, which somehow means a larger capacity, is apparently pretty popular among the former USSR housewives for its versatility, the 13-hour delay timer, and the 12-hour keep warm feature. The deal-breaker for me was the ability to put all the ingredients, close the lid, and go away on my business.

After ordering the rice cooker last Friday, I finally received it on Thursday. So, by now I’ve used it just twice. Nonetheless, my impressions so far are great. Of course, there are some issues with it, like there would be when switching between gas and electric stoves. It will be some trial and error time for me to get the water-grain proportions right when cooking porridges. For everything else there are plenty cookbooks, and my mom was kind enough to get me a summary of her Russian housewives’ online forums with select recipes. Now, all I need is to find some time to actually read all of that.

Speaking of cookbooks, Borders had a 40% off any one book coupon for yesterday and today. Unfortunately for me, the coupon was valid in-store only, so I had to browse through the disorganized shelves (because of the construction) in the 19th & L NW store. I originally wanted to buy The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which is apparently out of stock all over Metropolitan DC area. Well, the only related cookbook was the Fix-It And Forget-It Big Cookbook: 1400 Best Slow Cooker Recipes, which is not a good one for a single person because most of the recipes there serve at least 4 people and require at least a 3-quart slow cooker (mine is just over 1 quart). Thus, after some browsing and thinking I settled for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cooking - For Guys. While it does not have many recipes that can be adapted for a rice cooker, it covers the basics of cooking techniques, and the servings are for three people at most sparing me from doing any adjustments. Though, most likely this will be one of the very few cookbooks I will actually own. With sites like Recipe Matcher, All Recipes, Extratasty, Rouxbe, and Cookstr there is just no need of having a physical cookbook in the kitchen.