I believe my rice cooker and I have been together for about forty-four years. I'm not sure of the exact date I got it, and I was going to see if I could find out whether or not there was any information on the Internet about the Toshiba Model RC-6B rice cooker that I own. All I could find was a plaintive plea from someone who had posted on kitchen.manualsonline.com hoping to find some lost directions for using the same model rice cooker, which they had bought in 1974 in Guam. I went to the Toshiba website and it seems they don't make any appliances like rice cookers anymore.
So I decided to do a little googlesleuthing. It turns out that, according to the Toshiba Science Museum, the first commercially successful rice cooker was made by Toshiba in December, 1956. In a short time, they were making 200,000 of them a month, and in four years, half the homes in Japan had a rice cooker. In 1970, the total annual rice cooker output was over 12 million.
In my travels about the web, I found websites that helped you to find a rice cooker. Apparently there have been many "improvements" over the last forty years, some of them mentioned in the aptly named ricecookerfetish.com website. There are rice cookers with battery-powered memory and electronic timers, some that use induction heating, some with non-metallic inner cooking bowls, and so on.
And my little Toshiba RC-B? It has an on/off switch. You can see it in the picture below. That's it, in the front, under the Toshiba name. You move the lever up to turn it on, and a red light goes on. It stays on while the rice is cooking, and then turns off automatically. If you listen carefully, you can hear the "pop" when the lever goes back down, and if you look, the light will be off. That's all.
I was going to write a diary about how they don't make appliances like they used to, but as I started to remember little bits and pieces of where it's been and what I've done with it, I realized it was part of my life story. Follow me below the orange kosquiggle to see what I mean.
I wasn't raised in a rice-eating house (except when we went out for Chinese food, which was often enough for me not to remember when I learned how to use chopsticks). I know we used to have rice with cinnamon and sugar and a little milk when we didn't feel well--a dish my Chinese-American husband has never been able to understand. I left home to go to college and never really returned full-time. I got my first apartment when I dropped out in my Junior year and went to work full-time and school part-time instead. The initial purchase of the rice cooker is shrouded in mystery--that is, I really can't remember when I got it.
While I may not remember exactly when I got it, I am certain it was with me riding in the trunk of my car when I headed back to Ann Arbor to finish up my last ten units for my undergraduate degree. It was nestled in the trunk when I was driving on the freeway in the rain and the car in front of me dropped its tailpipe. Instead of running over it, I tried to avoid it, and swerved onto the left shoulder. I managed that maneuver fine, but swinging the wheel to the right to get back on the highway was my undoing. I flew across four lanes of freeway, winding up on top of the metal barrier they had on the right side to keep cars off. I must have been in shock because I remember sitting up very high (as the car was on top of this short fence-like barrier) and looking down at someone who ran over and explained she was a nurse and asked if I was okay. I explained calmly, while looking at my eye in the rearview mirror, that I was looking for my contact lens, which had slipped off when my head hit the steering wheel. (This was before lapbelts were in most cars.) What does that have to do with my rice cooker you say? Well, to this very day, it carries the dent it got in that accident.
Things were not quite as exciting for a while. I was going out with a Japanese former-student, and I learned how to make sushi. The rice cooker came in handy then. I remember the Japanese woman who taught me to wash the rice before cooking it. I think it was 75 times swishing the water around it, drain off the water and do it again, three times. Back in those days, the rice was covered with talc and you were supposed to rinse it before using. Thank goodness they use something edible now and you don't have to rinse it. I like it better this way.
Anyway, the rice cooker served me well, and then came along with me across the country when I moved to San Francisco. The boyfriend stayed in Michigan, and unbeknownst to me, who was being "true," apparently found another girlfriend, as my mother found out one day when she saw him and someone else commented on how cute his girlfriend looked. (Hint: It wasn't me.) I dumped the boyfriend, forgot all the Japanese I had learned, but kept the rice cooker.
In San Francisco I got a job teaching English as a Second Language, and had a few fancy big deal dinners for colleagues where I cooked a lot of Chinese and Japanese food. I remember one time I was making tempura and had the tempura sauce I'd made already poured in Japanese-style tea cups, one in front of each place, with a dollop of shredded daikon inside. As I was getting ready to serve the tempura, a friend of mine seated at the table loudly exclaimed that the soup was very good. Unfortunately, I hadn't made a soup and it turned out he had made an early venture into the dipping sauce. My fault for not announcing what it was, I guess. I gave him my dipping sauce, and the meal went off fine, the rice cooker doing its usual yeoman duty.
After I got married, the rice cooker came in handy too. It was there when I got a call late one night about one of my adult students who had been picked up at the Golden Gate Bridge, threatening to jump. She stayed with us for some months while she got her act together, and it was the first time I saw someone steam something on top of the rice while it was cooking.
I just use my rice cooker to make regular rice, but I have one recipe I make that calls for turmeric rice. To make it, I use four cups of uncooked rice, add a teaspoon of garlic salt, 2 teaspoons of olive oil, and 2 teaspoons of turmeric. Then I stir it a little and turn on the rice cooker. The rice comes out a lovely yellow color with a mild flavor, although the rice pot turns out to have a bit of the lovely yellow color too, but it does wear off.
Oh, if you are interested in the rest of the recipe, it is called "Beef Leban" and it calls for frying together a chopped onion, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, a pound and a half of ground beef, 2 chopped red peppers, and some sliced mushrooms. This is the sauce: 1 cup of hot beef broth (I use a can of no-fat, no-salt), combine with 2 6 oz. cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons allspice, 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and 1 teaspoon paprika. Mix and add to the cooked meat mixture. Then add 3 tablespoons wine vinegar and cook until liquid is nearly gone. (Actually, I like it liquidy so I don't always pay attention to that part.) I think you could make it with vegetable broth and vegetables too if you don't like meat.
I only had trouble with my rice cooker once, when it wouldn't turn on. You'd think after thirty-four years or so, it would be okay if it was retired, but my husband just got a replacement electrical cord and it's been working fine ever since. They sure don't make appliances like they used to. They forgot the planned obsolescence! Lucky me.