I remember reading somewhere about "Asian horror stories" - and it's not supernatural or creepy or anything. It could be as simple as not realizing you haven't turned on the rice cooker until the time you're ready to have lunch.
Yeah, that happened to me, and while it is an inconvenience, modern rice cookers mean you don't have to wait that long. Me, now that I live alone, I only cook one cup of rice a day for both lunch and dinner, which means a cooking time of roughly twenty minutes, and a steaming time (I don't know how to call it exactly, but you know the thing we call inin in Filipino?) of roughly ten minutes more. For good measure, I keep the rice cooker plugged in for 45 minutes, including both cooking and inin time. I can cut the latter if I'm really hungry; I'll just have to let up with slightly wetter rice.
Thing is, I've finally shifted to brown rice. Health reasons. My weight is actually going up and my doctor pointed out that my heart rate is higher than usual and so is my blood pressure. "Go back to exercising," she said, and I have two thoughts in my head. One, I have been so tired recently, and the bed is just so appealing. Two, I don't think I'll ever go to the gym because, you know, stupid reasons.
I don't miss out of physical activity, though. I walk, a lot, although I will confess I haven't walked as much when even my weekends got busy with work. I don't think having 18,000 steps in my three days in Hong Kong counts in the long run, but then, I can keep up the illusion that I am making some progress by monitoring my blood pressure twice daily and thinking my medicines are working.
But I will have to lose weight. I will have to resume exercising and I will have to look at what I'm eating. Sorry, iced coffee; you will have to go. I know I will need a pick-me-up for sluggish afternoons, but the bed... anyway, brown rice. It's a very small gesture, and the parents finally convinced me to shift. It also helped that I finally saw a five-kilo bag at the grocery; I keep on seeing two-kilo bags instead. At least I can stick to it longer.
The thing with brown rice is, it takes a bit longer to prepare. After washing it, you'll need to soak it in water for half an hour. Also, you'll need roughly twice the water you usually use when cooking white rice. I had to test it, because I didn't like my rice being a little too mushy. So it's slightly less than twice. You can eyeball it. That means the cooking process takes longer, though - 45 minutes, roughly.
With all that faff, you'd really expect that your rice would be ready when it's time for lunch. But, again, Asian horror stories: you forget to turn on the rice cooker. Your rice has been soaking for an hour and a half. You're really hungry. You don't have a choice, damn it. You'll wait an hour more for lunch... and your rice will be a little too mushy, even if you've adjusted the water volume. Ah, well. Stressful situations like this can only be answered by iced coffee...
...nope, you can't.
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