When I was an infant my family spent about a year living in the back woods of Louisiana. Apparently, we lived near a rice field and were pretty close to the owner of said field, because we’d end up with huge bags of rice. Hence, the many rice centered dishes my mom cooked for us, hence my first solid food being rice and probably beans, hence my great love of this grainy carb.  As a child, I remember craving things with rice, particularly rice, gravy, and chicken with a handle (ya know because I couldn’t call it a leg, things from the meat tree don’t have legs!), and for dessert red jello topped with a little poof of cream. Well, the point of this story is not tell you about my favorite childhood meal, but to share with you an appliance I remember my beloved carb being prepared in.

A Hitachi Chime-O-Matic Rice Cooker. Yeah, I realize it’s a weird thing to share on Thrifting Thursday, because it’s kind of an appliance and it’s not really something I’ve thrifted. But it’s old, and I think it’s kinda cool. I mean who wouldn’t love the giant orange bell, and where can you find something with a chime-o-matic feature nowadays?

Anywho, while we lived in Louisiana, my mom received this magical cooker of rice as a gift from my dad’s brother’s in-laws who were visiting for dinner. My mom was cooking rice on the stove top, ya know the old fashioned way waiting for the water to boil or however you cook rice the old fashioned way. Anyways, the point is that they thought it was taking waaay too long for that rice to get done, and that it was just a sin that my mother didn’t have a rice cooker to provide her family with rice almost instantly. So, they gave to her my most favorite of small appliances. That was 30 years ago, I was 1.5 years old.

So, I’ve grown up with rice cooked in a rice cooker, particularly the Chime-O-Matic Rice Cooker.

And ya know what?

It still chimes when the rice is done.