Posted on: Wednesday, January 19, 2005

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Recalling Grandma's rice pot

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

My grandmother's rice pot was of a type you don't see any more: a squat, round pot with a protruding rounded lip around the top and a slightly conical lid like a straw hat, which fit into a groove. This arrangement was designed to allow the rice to boil over without spilling — the curved top captured the bubbling starchy juices and allowed them to drain back into the pot. The lid would clatter merrily in its groove as the rice boiled. I treasured that pot when it was bequeathed to me.

As all of us did then, I learned to cook rice before any other cooking skill: Measure the rice out of the kelemania, (the pottery crock on the pantry floor. Rinse until the water is clear. Drain carefully; don't lose any grains. Fill pot with until it reaches the second knuckle of your index finger (and why does that work for everyone when we all have different-sized hands?). Cover the pot. Bring it to a full boil. Immediately turn it down to low. Don't peek. It's done when it smells right.

I grew up before electric rice cookers and was most reluctant to adapt to them when they first became available. To me, the ritual of the rice couldn't be properly carried out without the music of that dancing lid. (Grandpa used to say it was doing the hula — a remark she also made about her open-top ringer washing machine, brand-named Savage, which used to literally shimmy across the concrete laundry room floor.)

But then a shadow was cast over the pot: Aluminum cooking vessels were suspected to be a contributor to the brain changes that cause Alzheimer's, a disease that had robbed us of Grandma's sly sense of humor, her skills in the kitchen and around the house, her sage advice and sympathetic ear. It was said that some corrosive material was released by well-used pots (and Grandma's, put to work every day, was pitted and literally worn thin). This theory has since been refuted, but while it was still being bandied about, I felt so betrayed, and so scared to use the pot, that I threw it away. I didn't even risk giving it to charity. I just put it in the trash.

It's a mystery to me now how someone with a historian's heart could so lightly throw out what would soon be an artifact of the Islands' plantation era. But I don't think I realized then how soon the everyday items that populated our kitchen would become collectible rarities: the square white glass salt and pepper shakers with their red metal lids, the tobacco bag that was tied to the faucet to capture any grit in the water, the rice bag dish towels, the brown glazed teapot, the clattering rotary egg beater.

And it hurt to think that our beloved rice — the essential element in every dinner, and many breakfasts and lunches as well — might have hurt Grandma. I'm glad now to know that wasn't true. And I regret the loss of that little rice pot.

If you've got thoughts, memories, perspectives to share about the place of rice in Hawai'i life, enter our Island Art of Rice essay contest.