A Love Letter to My First Kitchen Hero

From late-night gaming sessions to half-baked ideas, you were always there—one scoop at a time.

Author

Earl Briones
April 08, 2025

Dear First Rice Cooker,

You weren’t fancy. No digital buttons, no multi-grain settings, no singing when the rice was done. Just two modes—cook and warm—and a slight wobble when the countertop wasn’t level. You looked like a stubby robot and sounded like a tired sigh, but you were built like a tita: low-key, unbothered, and always feeding people without asking for credit.

You were my first real kitchen appliance. Not a chef’s knife. Not a high-speed blender. Nope—just you. The original multitasker. You didn’t just cook rice. You cooked my life.

You were there in the broke years—when dinner was rice and canned whatever. You held it down through late-night gaming sessions, post-shift hunger pangs, and recipe experiments that probably violated the Geneva Convention. Mac and cheese in a rice cooker? Tried it. Not good! We got through it.

You were patient with my half-baked ideas (and half-cooked meals). Like the time I thought I could steam dumplings, make congee, and boil eggs—at the same time. You didn’t explode. You didn’t judge. You just quietly gave up halfway through and left a faint smell of failure and ambition in the air.

Still, you always showed up, even when I didn’t deserve you. I burned you, forgot to clean you, left you on warm for so long the rice fused into a single starch-based lifeform. But you never complained. You just kept cooking, like a kitchen auntie who saw everything and said nothing—except maybe a hiss of steam when things got too real.

I’ve upgraded since. Sleeker models. Multi-cookers with pressure settings. But none of them have your energy. None of them remind me of late nights, early mornings, and figuring out adulthood one spoonful at a time.

You weren’t just a rice cooker. You were my sous chef, therapist, and carb supplier. You got me through it all—one scoop of hot, slightly-too-sticky rice at a time.

Wherever you are now (hopefully retired in peace and not reincarnated as a discount toaster), thank you.

Forever grateful (and mildly overfed),
Earl