Rice for One.

Well, it's been a month since I last updated, much apologies. I've actually had plenty of blog ideas that I wanted to write about, but I've just lacked the incentive and motivation to write. I think I can attribute this to the fact that I only have math courses this quarter. :<

Anyways, I decided to blog this down as I washed the dishes from the rice that I made last night.

If you don't know already, I'm Chinese. Born in America, so ABC or whatever. But I'm first generation ABC so my family still eats a great deal of rice. In fact... we only eat rice for dinner except for rare occasions where mom is tired and just cookies rice noodles. But in any case, I've always cooked rice for 6 people or more. Therefore, when I got to college, I, of course, contributed to Asian stereotypes and had a rice cooker in the dorm (even though technically we weren't allowed to) and made rice. As a side note, I heard that the Asian-American dorm floor always smells of rice. No surprising.

I diverge. When I make rice now, I realize that it's not worth the effort of making it. First of all, I'm used to making big portions and when those portions, there are unwritten rules/guidelines as to the water/rice ratio. So far, I've heard of three methods:

1. If you stick your pinky on top of the rice, the water level should hit the first knuckle.
2. Put your whole hand in flat over the rice and the water should just skim the top of your hand.
3. Put in an extra cup of liquid for every cup of rice.
(If you have other methods, feel free to comment them and I'll add to the list)

The 3rd one doesn't really count for Asians since Asians don't use measuring tools. They always eyeball it and it's enough when it "feels enough". So the third method is for our non-Asian friends who can't feel secure without precision.

But those rules only seem to apply to bigger batches of food. Perhaps it's because Chinese people like to make big batches and save it up since they would waste electricity if they just make a bunch of smaller batches. Or perhaps it's because Asian families outside of communist China seem to be so there's always a hungry mouth to feed. Remember, there's always that freeloading neighbor who just "happens" to visit around dinner time.

So when I tried to apply these rules my little portion of rice for one... it was really soggy. Imagine my shame... failing at cooking rice? That's like failing to recite my multiplication tables. But yes, I was sad that it came out somewhat soggy, but I ate it anyways because I didn't want my boyfriend to have pockmarks. (Funny story actually. One of my Chinese friends once told me that his parents got him to eat every little grain of rice because they told him that the remaining grains would be the number of pockmarks his wife will have in the future. As a naive child, he believed them and made sure he ate everything.)

It wasn't too bad actually since I ate it with Korean seaweed and some Japanese sashimi soysauce without the sashimi. Hit every East Asian country since my rice was from China. Crystal actually commented on how I should have eaten it with spam. Here's how it went:

me: I just had three packets of Korean seaweed...
me: I feel so ashamed...
me: And filled with MSG.
Crystal: hahaha
Crystal: isn't it just salt?
me: And like oil. Hahaha
me: I had it with rice though.
Crystal: ooh
Crystal: shoulda had some spam too
me: Didn't have spam. :<
me: I'm too poor to afford meat, hahaha.
Crystal: hahah
Crystal: true spam is a bit pricey for what it is
me: Hahah, mechanically pulled parts.

Yeah, I actually really couldn't afford the spam. Spam is expensive, man. Last I checked it was like 3 bucks a can. I always thought they were like 50 cents...

Anyways, you know what really made the one-portion rice not worth it? The fact that I had to clean it up. In true college fashion, I didn't wash the dishes the day I finished eating the food. In fact, if my roommate didn't keep telling me to wash the bowl and rice cooker, I would have just left it there until I needed the bowl again. Yeah, I know, gross... but what can you except from a college student? If it was a stack of dishes, I would be more compelled to wash them, but one bowl? Seems like a waste of time.

But you know what? It takes forever to clean up that bowl to rice and the rice pot. Since I made it somewhat sticky, it was a pain in the buttocks to scrape all the little pieces of rice from the surface. I actually had to use a sponge and detergeant and stood there for 10 minutes washing a bowl, a rice pot, and a spoon. Way too much effort for the two bowls of rice that I ate.

They should make self cleaning rice pots. That would be neat and then I don't have to worry about cleaning them anymore. Haha.

But despite everything, I can't give up my rice. And I can't trust the dining commons to cook up decent rice so I have to do it myself.