Spontaneous ∂erivation

I can’t sleep, so I thought I would elaborate on an answer for someone who asked, a couple weeks ago, what kind of rice cooker they should get. I owned four at the time, and currently own five. I figure I can give an informal perspective on rice cookery.

I cook rice regularly, and let me tell you, with a rice cooker it’s way easier than making your own bread. And faster. Possibly healthier, though it depends on how much butter you dump into rice—I don’t put any in, because I usually put something on top of the rice when it’s served, so butter is kind of superfluous. Any rice cooker automatically shuts off or goes into warming mode once the rice is done, and they automatically detect this. Cooking rice on the stove tends to be a hit-and-miss affair if you’re not experienced and/or not watching the pot. And of course, most college dorms don’t have extensive kitchens, so cooking rice on the stove is less feasible than cooking rice in a rice cooker.

Another nice thing is that plenty of rice cookers come with steaming trays, which turns your rice cooker into a multi-function appliance that can easily serve up one-pot meals, or simply steam stuff without indulging in the $$$ a dedicated electric steamer would require. It’s very convenient to steam marinated chicken breasts, strips of beef/pork, or veggies along with your rice (although you really have to time veggies well; broccoli and brussel sprouts get ewwww if steamed too long).

First things first: this is the awesome book to get if you’re going to go beyond just cooking rice as a base for meals: The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which has a great introduction to rice cookers in general, and a ton of great recipes that actually work, ranging from appetizers to one-pot meals to desserts. For the first-timers or for more experienced folks, this is a wonderful book to have.

(Also probably makes a great holiday gift for someone you know with a rice cooker.)

Let’s move onto the cookers themselves.

There are two main types of rice cookers: the on/off rice cooker that many Westerners are familiar with, and the fuzzy logic rice cooker, which is the choice of many Japanese, and for very good reasons.

A typical on/off rice cooker

The on/off rice cooker is the cheapest, simplest, and can steam stuff. On/off rice cookers tend to be more fragile, and usually die after a few years, depending on the brand and how much you use them. Not surprising. Some models just turn off when the rice is done, and some go into a warm mode. Expect to spend anywhere from $30 to $60 on this type of cooker.

The fuzzy logic rice cooker is more expensive, usually in the triple digit range, a little bit more complicated (but not by much), and can’t steam but can do things like time rice to cook in time for you to wake up and make moist rice porridge without needing oversight. And of course they all have a warm mode. Fuzzy logic rice cookers last for quite some time, even under heavy usage, to the point where their little lithium batteries may run out—but that’s just for their internal clocks; if the battery runs out, you just have to reset the time when you plug them in.

A typical fuzzy logic rice cooker

Both kinds of rice cookers come in various sizes, from teeny 3-cup models (I’ve even seen a 1-cup model, though that’s very rare) to more average 6-cup and 10-cup models, to ginormous 40-cuppers. Generally it doesn’t really matter how big the cooker is, as long as the amount of rice you’re cooking will fit in it; a 10-cup beast will cook one cup of rice just as well as a 3-cup. (A 40-cup rice cooker, though, is… stretching it.)

For the trade-off of unwieldiness, large rice cookers allow you to use more of the recipes in The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which is why I have three on/off models and two fuzzy logic models. A 10-cup cooker can steam more things, and is quite convenient that way. Most people in the West probably want a 10-cup on/off; college students in dorms really should get a 6-cup or perhaps even a 3-cup if they’re really cramped. Rice porridge is not terribly popular here, but fuzzy logics are still amazing due to their timing feature, also quite useful for busy people (and probably make good holiday gifts).

Typical Rice Cooker Accessories

Every rice cooker comes with a rice spatula and a rice measuring cup, and most come with a steaming tray (plastic, non-polycarbonate, or metal). Follow the instructions about the rice measuring cup—unless you’re using the plain rice guidance recipes from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which leads to the best results, particularly since the cookbook covers different types of rice. (I usually get Kohuko Rose brand, which is a short-grain rice readily available in stores like Safeway; long-grain rice is more familiar to Western markets).

Here are the models I have, or as close an approximation as possible; I have older on/off models, due to island stores’ stock being a little limited in this area.

Black & Decker 3-Cup Rice Cooker

This model is newer than the one I own, but it has the same features: cute and little (would fit into the tiny shelf that was my allotment in the college dorm), tough non-stick coated pot, both the cook (on) and the warm feature, and a plastic steaming tray—unusual for 3-cup models because of their size. Often I’ll put in a cup of uncooked rice and put a quickly torn-into-two Chinese-style sausage¹ in the tray.

It hasn’t died yet, but I expect it to bite it in the next year or so. That’s been my general experience with American-brand on/off rice cookers. (Zojirushis, on the other hand, last forever.)

Zojirushi 6-Cup Rice Cooker (Pictured above)

This is a great size for single-person meals that you can put leftovers in the fridge for bento lunches the next day. All Zojirushi on/off models—except the 3-cup model, which doesn’t come with a steamer—have metal steaming trays, very fancy. All have the cook/warm modes, but their pots, while non-stick, have a much thinner lining and are far lighter than most other models. Definitely do not use metal utensils in this thing (nylon or silicon, the latter preferred, are okay).

Unlike other rice cookers, you can get replacement pots. I think most other brands are expected to die before you need a replacement pot.

Zojirush 10-cup Rice Cooker

A great size if you want to be able to steam whole chicken breasts, for instance, or entire fish, or meat plus vegetables, and serve a family. I have it because of the larger steaming capabilities, to replace my electronic polycarbonate steamer. Plus you can steam puddings in it.

Sanyo 3.5 Cup Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker

Back when I lived in an apartment with not a lot of counter space, this was a great cooker, even though it was a Sanyo (Sanyos and Tigers are little cheaper than Zojirushis… and you get what you pay for). It’s too small to have a steaming tray (the Black & Decker 3-cup is quite special that way), but this is a fuzzy logic cooker. It doesn’t exactly steam well. In fact, um, I don’t think it can make bread well either. Sanyo tends to claim a lot more capabilities for their cookers than actually work well.

If you want it for rice or rice porridge or a timer, it’s great. It can come in all sorts of… interesting… colors, as you can already tell by the picture (mine is white and pastel blue).

The pot is also thick and heavy.

Zojirushi Neuro Logic 5.5 Cup Rice Cooker

Actually, that’s just Zojirushi’s cute way of saying “Fuzzy Logic.” The best rice cooker I have, feature-wise and hardiness-wise. I can make one of the rice pudding recipes from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook² in it.

It also plays “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” when it’s done cooking. Very vital feature.³

The pot is again thinner than pots in other brands of rice cookers.

You know an awesome thing you can make in timed fuzzy logic rice cookers? Steel-cut oats. The dang oats need to soak overnight, because they’re so tough, but the timer in the morning can proceed to cook them in time for you to wake up and eat them. Perfect. Recipe also available in The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook (unlike so many other cookbooks, that’s a very fitting name).

In conclusion, here are my very favorite recipes from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook:

• Short-Grain White Rice (proper water-to-rice proportions)
• American Long-Grain White Rice (ditto)
• Matthew’s Rice (some of the one-pot recipes require outside preparation of the other ingredients; this is more in the tradition of throw-everything-in-the-pot-already)
• Chinese Sausage and Rice (requires more cutting up than my usual throw-and-go, but worth it)
• Old-Fashioned Steel Cut Oatmeal
• random steamed vegetable ones (includes little recipes for various butters you can freeze in chunks and put on top of the veggies, like the ones that come in the microwave steaming vegetable products in the store’s frozen food section)
• steamed chicken breast and rice with the teriyaki marinade
• Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding
• simplest rice pancakes ever, and savory too

I don’t typically like to, but you can also make risottos, beans, couscous, grits, granola, and more (recipes in The Book as well, lots). Tamales. Dolmas. You get the idea.

… I’m so hungry now. I will snack and then sleep. G’night.

1. Note: these are incredibly, incredibly unhealthy for you. [↩]
2. OMG, so good. [↩]
3. Okay, not really. But it’s so, ah, kawaii. [↩]

So a lot of people have heard by now of the RWA removing a member of Dear Author’s bloggers from their associates roster over the #romfail tag on Twitter.

I think quite a few authors in the RWA complained about #romfail because, not only was it a negative review tag, but it was also on Twitter—and that aspect, they feel, threatens their livelihood far more than just reviews on a website, even one with as high traffic as Dear Author.

Some people have come onto the Dear Author comment thread with remarks along the lines of, “You totally deserved this.” A lot more people view this as a stupid decision, an overreaction, even if RWA is entitled to execute such an action.

It’s not about whether RWA can do such a thing. It’s about whether such a reaction is so over-the-top about such a menial thing that it calls into question the reasoning skills of those who made the decision.

In my opinion, the RWA’s decision is entirely over the top. But I’m not surprised, and I think the board had to do it, even if they themselves would disagree.

The thing is, any group has vocal members who will take grievances as far as possible over incidents that threaten their ego, whether or not it would impact their business. If there are a lot of complaints, then majority rule has to take over, because the majority of the body believes it to be a grievance that needs to be remedied in such and such a manner.

A lot of people are saying that RWA is headed by idiots, and at least SFWA wouldn’t do that.

Don’t count on it. In a similar situation, they might have to.

For the past several months I’ve been waiting for the ax to fall from SFWA. I’m not a member of SFWA—I just write for Tor.com. I was critical of an SFWA member outside of a review, the result of which was enough to require a legal opinion. And the result of which caused me a lot of mental grief, because my PTSD likes to make fucking weird associations, and I had formerly admired to some degree this member.

It wasn’t big, it didn’t last long, but SFWA would probably have to come down on me with a statement if somehow enough complaints are ever registered. Despite the general awesomeness of the SFWA board, they would have to do it. They can never assure me that they wouldn’t do it. And unlike Jane, I might get fired if they did so.

This is an unlikely scenario. But it was enough to make me feel discouraged about writing for Tor.com. In a way, I’m writing my current PTSD in Fiction series on Tor.com because it’s a way to help me get over that mental block. And you know, I can’t help reviewing a Terry Pratchett book.

I guess what I’m saying is: it’s not fair, but sometimes things happen because of the way everyone is joined up together.

And in the end, one has to decide how much such things matter to one with respect to deciding how they’ll write in the future. For Jane at Dear Author, I know her answer: it won’t affect her at all. And that is awesome.

For me, I don’t know. I will keep writing for Tor.com, though perhaps I’ll never again be critical again outside of my reviews (which almost everyone seems to agree upon as fair ground, with the exception of Twitter reviews with a fail tag, apparently, in the case of some portion of RWA’s membership).

Or maybe I will be critical again. My brain hasn’t yet decided on whether it’ll keep bringing the random fuckery every time I think of doing so.

I don’t even know. And the cold medication is not helping.

And my gods, homemade applesauce is awesome.

Breakfast Bento: awesome applesauce, Bob’s Red Mill Old-Fashioned Muesli, satsuma slices.

The awesome applesauce is from this recipe Natalie L. recommended. I halved the water for the slow cooker version; I also needed to halve the lemon juice, not because I don’t like lemons but because you generally halve the liquids when converting recipes for the slow cooker. Five hours later, boom, it was done.

The smooth texture is the result of applying an immersion blender to the results. It is quite excellent with muesli. I used Jonagold apples because that was what I could find. I really want to find Cortlands next time. Which will be soon.

I guess this bento container is my official breakfast bento thing. By the way, when I store it, it folds in and nests upon itself like this:

Lunch Bento: slow cooker chicken curry¹, French bread², huge grapes, amazing applesauce, muesli to put in the sauce.

Oh, so yum.

1. It’s okay; use a better wine than I did. [↩]
2. Safeway’s bakery, which, on the island at least, turns out amazing preservative-free stuff. [↩]

It’s an odd thing. But making bento had managed to drag me into work (as opposed to working from home) every day I’ve made it. Even the days where I spend part of the morning on the floor, wondering how I can have everything I want but still have really, really bad moments. There are times when I identify with Lord Peter Wimsey, and those are some of them.

Anyways, today’s bentos are exactly the same as yesterday, except the applesauce is replaced with hummus egg salad. Store-bought hummus, but I tasted it, and it was okay.

I thought the 20 minutes of bento-making before the commute, with maybe some prep time the night before, would get bothersome, but it’s become therapeutic instead. “I made something to look forwards to later! Take that, my twisted psychology!” It’s a good way to focus on the present and future, and lessens the impact of whatever random PTSD crap my brain wants to inflict today.

I can’t believe I’m still suffering the aftershocks of Wednesday (if you follow my Twitter, you’ll know that heading out into the early dark stormy windy morning after dreaming about my father’s face and finding my garbage can moved discombobulated me… a bit).

Fortunately: yay ferry ride!

Well, the prospect of making bento does get me up and, subsequently, out the door in the mornings. I think it’s just that I can have a relaxed breakfast on the ferry, rather than one rushed at home or something expensive and greasy in the ferry galley.

Also, never underestimate being able to eat a lunch both cheap and dry in the heart of Seattle.

Breakfast Bento: I found a way to make the cereal work!

Plus mandarin oranges and grapes. The rice milk is in an off-screen Lock&Lock. I did try some yogurt last night, but it didn’t work out for me taste-wise.

However, hummus is apparently also a complete protein, so I want to try that next week. And I know I like hummus.

By the way, this is one of my older bento kits, from Zojirushi, who also makes the Mr. Bento bentos. Its components looka little like the ones for either Mr. or Mrs. Bento, but they don’t stack in a single column.

A spoon (or chopsticks) fits across the top, and then I gather it and click the handle like so.

While this is compact, my eBags and Laptop Lunch combo are still thinner. However, it works on the ferry.

Lunch Bento:

Honey bread, peanut butter, strawberry fruit sandwich in the Extra Large container. Apple slices (sigh), goldfish crackers (yay!), and applesauce with cinnamon (didn’t work for me, but I think that was because the apple sauce brand sucked).

I really do like my Laptop Lunch box. But I need to vary the menu more (not that my eating out menu ever varied much…).

I’m thinking rice dishes next week. Maybe make a curry over the weekend for meals next week, since I picked up some Native Forest non-BPA-lined cans of coconut milk. I need to freeze the last of the veggie soup and bisque.

Bake some different bread… go home more, workaholic less… crazy times.

… for gods’ sakes, don’t give other people $20,000 to do it. Or even $600.

And especially, if they say they’re helping you to self-publish, you definitely should not give them royalties. Especially if all they do is sell you expensive copies of your work to try to sell yourself.

Real self-publishing: the money made forwards is all yours. That’s part of the fucking point.

ETA: John Scalzi sez it better.

Even now, in the darkness, I hear her speak. My sister, my angel, who I knew but slightly; who I should know more about, but now she is gone. She and so many others.

“Focus, V.” echoes a voice , different, in the darkness of my mind, disturbing the nervous meditation that is waiting for everyone else to leave the archive library—though the term stretches the normal definition here. As does everywhere else here.

I love the Academy for all the wrong reasons, but you might as well say that drinking water is wrong, killing innocent micro-organisms. Everything that is the Academy is also me.

The last on has left, locking the door behind—a sweet but lethal guy, Atmospheric Winds, who hails from the last tribe of Eskimos when we lost the entire West Coast to the dreaming insanity. He is eagle-eyed—and that’s no exaggeration; extreme body modification is run of the mill here.
But eagle eyes won’t penetrate the camoflauge that enfolds me. That is a shape of wrongness on this world. But I made a bargain.

And that’s why I’m leaving as soon as possible.

I riffle through the computer files while another part of me (no; a part of brain tissue that he resides in) traces and disables, using interfaces meant only for the fleet of thought by the true Artificial Intelligences. He cuts through defences and encyption like butter, but leaves no trace behind. Cutting water, as Mushishi once said.

He isn’t one of them—I mean, not a true AI. I’ll tell you later when we get out the hell out of here.

He nods at one point (his temporary visual imprint on my brain. I must remember that he is not I. What did my sister do, when she was in my position? I don’t know, and her legacy keeps his own secrets, liked and barred… somewhere).

As we make our escape into the flooded backstreets of New York—too easy, a mere climb through a window, so there must be a mole in the so-called tight ship that the Iron Driller runs… I wonder what side of the current Academy schism we’ll approach next. More like a dodecahedron at this point, after the final and quite confusing collapse of the Westomythos war.

Actually, I don’t care that much. I want to see my sister again.

I’m not sure what he wants, but during our relatively uncomfortable days-long journey to some location only he knows, there are times when our thoughts touch, in sync, over memories and impressions. In those moments I gain purpose, but unfocused (can it even be called purpose? Enthusiasm?); what he feels during those moments he does not say.

One night, I stand on a cliff overlooking the academy grounds. There is something beyond their single-minded purpose. Which did not include my sister.

His plans do. And I am tired of losing connections, over and over and over…

Perhaps one will pay for all.

I turned my back and went back to the embering campfire with a single roll and a single meal cooking.

It wasn’t always this way.

Literally. Only breakfast. Have to head out into 5:30am traffic now. ETA to office: 2.5 effing hours.

Notes on Contents, Post-Effing-Meeting:

• two mandarin oranges, peeled and put into square Wilson silicon baking cups to separate them from the…
• apple slices (Fuji, which I’m sick of by now by the way, later this week I’ll start on Gala apples)
• sliced boiled egg with pepper and salt (the best way to put it in the box)
• “Explosive Pizza” goldfish crackers, which go really, really well with apples, even if you’re tired of apples.

Maybe I should add some Asian pears or something instead.

By the way, during the meeting I turned over my Ziploc divided container thingy and saw that each compartment had a marking of how much it held! Very nice: large is 2 3/4 cups (which is a bit big for me, but roomy for fruit and sandwiches), the next is 3/4 cup, and the smallest is 1/2 cup. In ounces and milliliters as well: 22 oz, 6 oz, 4 oz; or 650 ml, 175 ml, 100 ml.

To give the meeting credit, that wasn’t the only interesting part of the meeting, but it was damn close.

Session the seventh with my psychologist.

I got to say hi to my psychiatrist during the wait. He’s not just a great psychiatrist, by the way, but also hot.¹ Sadly, my life is not a romance novel, and that would be a really bad relationship to start up anyways.

So… I actually did not talk to my psychologist about the thing I thought I should talk to him about, because right now I’m going slightly crazy with the holidays approaching. It’ll get worse. I try to ignore what day it is but somehow I subconsiously remember that it’s almost time for the hell weeks in which my father used every single holiday stress excuse to beat, control, and dominate the crap out of me and my mother.

So. We talked about that. He poked a bit with “why did he act that way, do you think?” (My psychiatrist remembered that my father didn’t need alcohol in his system to be an abusive monster.)

And actually, I don’t know why he did all that. I mean, obtrusively it was because my mother and I never celebrated the holidays correctly, and this disappointed him into senseless rage. He wanted Martha Stewart perfect holidays, which are even more impossible when your family came here directly from Vietnam and thus have no American holiday tradition knowledge. At all.

I think he got all his ideas from television. Like, several contradicting lines of ideas. It was impossible to meet his standards, in large part because he never let you know what they were until he was slamming your head against the wall for doing something wrong. Also, he kept changing the rules—I can only imply this because he’d run the door over your toes because you didn’t do X, and then the next day he’d cut your hand because you did do X.

My psychologist and I figured it was completely irrational chaos, “almost psychotic,” he said.

Every holiday tradition, my father poisoned. It’s so horrible that I can barely do anything during the holidays except, when I can, knock myself out with something, or find some series (fantasy, SF, mystery, anything long and immersive and with at least a little humor and upbeat endings) and read hell for leather.

(Before my Kindle, or frankly Amazon Prime shipping, these times were incredibly bad. You think my local bookstore’s hours are horrible? They really hit the skids during the high shopping season. Like, gods forfend if people buy things from them. And if I finished whatever on Christmas Eve….

I must sound like a worthless little whiner to people who look down their noses at fast shipping, the Internet, or ebooks. Hmmm. How much do I care. Not very much.)

Anyways, we talked about some ways to possibly overcome the bad memories this holiday, but books seem the only reliable answer, as my only IRL social friend is not going to be here for the holidays. Well, that and connecting to other people….

… except that I am very shy and tend not to trust people. Part of that is because during the time when I was on the immediate run from my parents, well, it was just so strange that they kept finding me during those years…

… and it was a friend (another one, now an ex-friend) who was feeding them information about me. It’s even more complicated than that: he was the first guy who creepily sexually hit on me. When I was 17. I didn’t know that it was wrong at the time, and he implied it was all my fault because I kept sitting in sexy positions. (ETA: no, I didn’t know that they were sexy positions, and I wasn’t trying to seduce him. I didn’t even know of sex in any way but in terms of my father raping my mother. Not at all romantic or sexy.)

Actually, I found out that two friends were helping my parents stalk me. One of them was at my University department’s office, so she fed them all the forwarding information.

Yeah.

And then it got worse.

So. Um. It’s hard for me to start relationships.

I really don’t look forwards to the holidays at all. And other than that… I got nothin’.

1. When he’s not wearing his crazy plaid blazer jacket. Ye gods. [↩]

Today’s bentos were slightly different. I have a lot of soup to eat….

Breakfast bento: Cereal, goldfish crackers—because I couldn’t think of a good protein that early in the morning :) —and apple slices. Lemon juice is awesome.

Thursday I’ll implement Rosa’s suggestion of yogurt. With some berries, that would be yum.

(Wednesday is no bento day, I think. It is an 8am meeting day, which means I have to get up at 4am. Traffic peaks at 6:30am on the island and is Seattle morning traffic after that. Joy.)

Lunch bento: Random vegetable soup (it also has beans for protein, though it doesn’t look like it), rice cooker pasta (got home a 9pm last night, and wasn’t up for much else), apple slices, humongous grapes.

This was just the right size when I got to it, around 3pm due to an appointment with my psychologist, which I’ll blog about in a little bit….