R1-C3
My house is quite small and my kitchen is tiny, so when I moved in I set about optimising my space a lot. I sold my physical video games collection, most of my books, a lot of electronics and some of my small kitchen appliances. While both cupboard and usable counter space is limited in my kitchen there is a little 22cm alcove under my kitchen presses that, while not usable as part of the counter space, is handy for keeping small appliances. They do have to be quite small, though. With this in mind I went into Harvey Norman’s with a tape measure and replaced my kettle with a travel kettle and my toaster with one short enough to fit in the gap. I also got rid of my slow cooker and instead got a more squat rice cooker in its place.
Rice cookers are incredibly elegant little machines and I highly recommend this Technology Connections video on how clever the design is. And while dealing with burnout and general lack of spoons one thing that has been getting me through it has been that rice cooker. Rice, beans and Lao Gan Ma has has become a staple meal for me. They are amazing for low-spoons, ADHD-friendly cooking because as long as you put in the right amount of water you can simply set it going and walk away, not having to babysit the pot or worry about timing very much.
That said, I am usually just cooking for myself and the rice cooker I had, as much as I love it, didn’t do small batches very well, so I was generally cooking two cups of rice at a time and then having to refrigerate and reheat most of it over the course of several days to get through each batch.
The solution to this: I just got an even smaller rice cooker. Meet R1-C3.
I am not much of a Star Wars gal1 but when some friends were over last month they remarked that the new rice cooker looked like a droid and I couldn’t disagree. It is a cute, compact, little friend. My friend Lena christened it R1-C3 and R1-C3 has been very faithful so far, making me nice meal-sized batches of rice to keep me going in these times.