one thing everyone who is struggling with cooking for themselves needs to know is that the shittiest rice cooker, like the ones that cost $5 at rite aid, can make entire meals. you can put anything you want (except uncooked meats that need prolonged temperatures to be safe to eat) in with the rice and push the button and go lie down for 20 minutes. you will learn through making slightly over or undercooked rice a few times how you need to adjust the liquid:rice ratios. you can put rice, a bag of baby carrots, whatever salt and spices, and a can of tuna (or a can of shredded chicken, beef, etc, or tofu, or canned beans, or canned tomatoes) in a rice cooker and it will be completely edible in ~20min. it costs like $1 per batch, less if you get regular carrots and cut them into chunks yourself. you should have frozen spinach and peas and corn in your freezer, or whatever frozen veg is safe for your food allergies. this kind of meal can survive in the fridge for a while and the freezer even longer. if you make it badly it wont poison you and can be salvaged with hot sauce, if you make it disastrously it can be thrown away without losing more than a dollar or two. if you make it okay it fullfills the Just Need Some Real Food requirements completely. if you need more calories you can add butter or oil, or eat sour cream on the side. if you forget about the rice cooker or fall asleep it will dry out on the bottom but wont burn. they should teach you this in 5th grade
If you enjoy an odd cookbook, Roger Ebert wrote "The Pot and How to Use It" in 2010. It's a rice cooker cookbook but also just an ode to the rice cooker. It's out of print but worth looking for at your local library; it's also available on The Internet Archive
thank you!! also i forgot to mention: when you are too sick or depressed to do dishes, you can eat your dinner out of the rice cooker pot itself. just dont touch a metal or ceramic utensil to the actual pot because it will scrape the nonstick coating which causes a lot of problems for another post. wooden or plastic spoon or chopsticks, or just eat carefully out of the middle of the pot without touching the sides. or you can use the actual rice paddle, who cares. ive done it! if youre too sick to cook "properly", making a one pot rice and veg and protein bowl and eating it directly out of the pot in your pajamas is 100% fine. you will recover and function so much better after eating a hot meal made of actual ingredients.
dietician Kylie Sakaida has a whole series of recipes for this on her youtube channel
