Robert V had just updated his status to "nearing the end," and as usual, activities on TACA thins down, as another semester waves good-bye, along with some Foreign Experts leaving their jobs/cities, and maybe even this great country.  One Foriegn Teacher I met recently is moving to a bigger metropolis, for a bigger school that offered a bigger salary, and I am working feverishly to get my end-of-term marks posted, while sorting out the things in my apartment to make room to accomodate the "left-over" items from this FT friend.  (I have been round this building long enough that the workers know me as THE ONE-MAN CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION -- I take in discarded items from expats and redistribute them to people I know either need them or they know others who can use the items somehow.)

Doing all these takes time.  And I like making my own meals, which also needs quite a bit of time each day.  I do my own cooking mainly because I want to know what is NOT in my food, besides those invisible chemicals.

A week ago I tried one option on the induction cook-top: GRUEL.  On other brands the label reads CONGEE or PORRIDGE, if English is included.  And I'm happy that I have found a great time-saving way to prepare meals.  Before that I mostly only used the FRYING button.

All I have to do is to rinse the right amount of rice, prepare whatever I like to add to my meal in terms of veggies and meat, plus the right seasoning (some seasoning should be added before having the food and is put in only until then), set the pot on the cook-top and press the GRUEL button.  If I don't want to put everything in at the same time I can add the various ingredients later.  The cooking process then becomes unattended (unless I need to add those said ingredients during cooking) even for as long as two hours!  And when I'm ready, a piping hot meal!

At first I tried this method to make porridge and it was so worry-free I did that a few times, all with no sticky pot-bottoms to boot.  Later I tried to make "steamed" rice by reducing the amount of water, and added the other veggies and meat stuff about thirty minutes later.  Let me tell you, no burned offerings here!  No carbon-copies either.

As long as my menu does not call for frying, I can do this.  And I find this a good alternative way of cooking without being in the kitchen physically, while my food gets ready by itself!  If you like steaming, use one of them wire-racks and put the to-be-steamed food on a dish to get a fully unattended cooking, all in one pass!

I'm doing my cooking these days this way and today I can use some of the spare-time to post this up for whoever would like to try.  (A disclaimer from me: Results may vary. Ha!)

My arsenal of cooking-wares include two electric pressure-cookers, woks, pots and pans, a steamer, etc...  This discovery of the GRUEL button might save my budgeted funds on that slow-cooker.

Press GRUEL.  No stirring required.  Neat.