A Rice Cooker Meal

So I'm currently waiting on my student loans to come in, and we just finished paying rent and a bunch of bills, so it's fairly slim pickings in the money for food department. This means we head back to the staple vegetables: potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage. Cheap, delicious, take a little while to go bad. Everything you want in a vegetable when you have a very depleted bank account!

But how to combine them? There is a very easy way to accomplish this. And it involves only 3 items: A small mug, a knife, and a rice cooker.

Here's the sitch:

Easy as Heck Rice Cooker Casserole

Ingredients:
1 carrot, chopped up
a chunk of cabbage, chopped up
1 small onion, chopped up
1 chunk off of a sweet potato, peeled and chopped up
Rice
Water
Spaghetti Sauce

Directions
Take all your chopped up vegetables and chuck them into the rice cooker.

Look at the veg. Yum!

Next, take a mug, and fill it with rice.

I never quite fill it to the top, else I always spill it

Add the rice to the bowl. Next, add 1 mug full of pasta sauce, and 1/2 mug full of water. Stir everything together.

Oooh this looks good!

Turn the rice cooker on, and let it do it's thing.

Sweet Babies!

Then you eat it, and enjoy the fruits of your very cheap labor. Adding things like garlic, regular potatoes, other vegetables, etc, and it'll still work. If you want to add frozen peas (and who wouldn't?) add them in right at the end, else they get all mushy and weird... no good.

nom nom nom!

Our first Lunch in the new place!

As I've harped on already, moving is exhausting! Even though we still don't have a stove quite yet (it comes later today!) and I had to come down to the local second cup to write this, I still managed to make a pretty delicious lunch.

Also, check out the first groceries I got for our new place! Not a huge haul, but a nice one none the less!

A bag of frozen peas and carrots, some pineapple, some coconut milk, some chopped garlic and a bit of cilantro paste.

I love cilantro paste, mostly because I despise cutting up herbs. I'll admit it, I take shortcuts when I can! Besides, being cooked in recipes it's far more convenient, and it also takes WAY longer to go bad! But moving on!

What Did I cook?

Well, Using the new rice cooker that Matthew got me for my birthday, I made a delightful rice dish for lunch!

If any of you have ever wondered what my recipes look like before I take the time to type them up here, check out my delightful chicken scratch recipe over here! I try to write down the recipes as I've making them (I rarely use cookbooks for anything, to be honest, though I own a lot of them!) I mostly do this so that I don't forget how much of everything I've put into my dishes, so that I can share them with y'all!

But onto the recipe!

Yummy Rice Cooker Rice with Peas and Carrots


Ingredients:
Sauce:
1 tsp Sesame oil
1 tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 tsp chili paste or Sriracha sauce
2 tsp Cilantro Paste (or 2 tbsp chopped cilantro)
3 tbsp Tamari or Soy Sauce

Rice:
2 cups jasmine rice
3 cups water
1 cup frozen pea/carrot mix (Edamame also works nicely in this!)

Directions:


Mix together all of your Sauce ingredients in a small bowl, and set aside.

Next, take your rice and water, and place them in your rice cooker.

Add in the sauce, and swirl everything around, turning on your rice cooker and letting it go.

Twiddle your thumbs and clean up any dishes while that cooks.

When it is finished cooking, turn it to the warm setting, and mix in your peas and carrots. Let it sit for 5 minutes on warm setting to let the peas and carrots get unfrozen.

Serve! I garnished mine with some more cilantro paste and a shaking of red pepper flakes. It was super delicious!

But what if you don't have a rice cooker? You can still make it on stovetop with these modified directions:

Mix up the sauce as above.

Add the rice, water, and sauce to a pot, and place on high until the water starts to boil, stirring frequently.

Turn to low and cover the pot, allowing it to simmer for 5 minutes.

Turn the heat off, and let it sit, covered for 10-15 minutes, until all water is absorbed. Fluff the rice with a fork, and mix in the carrots and peas, re covering for 5 minutes.

Enjoy!