memories

[toastykitten]

I caught a whiff of something today that brought me back to childhood. It's odd the way these things work - the smell was in no way similar to the actual thing itself, but something about the smell was very familiar in the same way. Way back before we had the money to buy rice cookers, my parents would cook rice every day in the regular pots and pans. My favorite part of the meal was the end, when we got to eat the "ning" - I forget what the Cantonese word is, and I don't even know if there's an English equivalent - it's the rice that got burnt together at the bottom of the pot. My mom would scrape it off each night and serve it to my little sister and me; I guess you could call it our dessert. (Well, we had an apple or orange later on in the night.) If it was burnt to the right consistency, we would eat it straight without any water.

I know Middle-Eastern people have something similar - they add spices and other things for flavor, but we had ours plain. It's been a long time since I've had it, especially since the rice cookers are too damn efficient and won't actually let anything stick to it. I've forgotten how to make rice the old-fashioned way, if I ever knew. I think that's where my love of crunchy foods started.