~~~
Day’s Verse:
“All you people of the land take courage,” declares the Lord, “and work; for I am with you.”
Haggai 2:4
~~~
You may not know this, but given enough time and heat, it is possible to convert normal white rice into pure carbon. As it turns out, this carbon can adhere to (for instance) the bottom of a pot so closely that you might wouldn’t know it had been rice except for the rice-shaped nature of said carbon. Interestingly enough, the process by which rice may be converted to carbon, which might be described thus,
C6H12O6(s) + Heat ? 6C(s) + 6H2O(g)
also happens to involve a small amount of smoke (not shown in the “ideal” conversion above). Thus this lesson also entailed a distinct confirmation that the smoke alarm in our new apartment works beautifully.
The pot, however, may never be the same. It has been soaking for days and, although it stopped smoking and steaming after a while, the carbonized remnants of our rice dinner may have been permanently adhered to the pot’s bottom.
Oh, no! I hope it wasn’t a great pot. Rice cookers all the way! 🙂
You know that set of three pots we got for our wedding? They were really nice pots. This is the last original one – I’ve already burned the bottom off the big one (Mom replaced it with a pot from my grandpa’s house that’s older than I am) and Eric’s girlfriend burned the bottom off the smallest one (they replaced it with an identical one). So this poor last survivor may have met its match.
I actually don’t like rice cookers because (1) Their texture, or at least the texture of mine, makes my skin crawl and makes me want to vomit; and (2) They are an absolute pain to clean. But (2) is negated by the difficulty of cleaning this pot, so I was actually thinking of switching back to our rice cooker.
I guess it’s been a rough early marriage time for your pots! (Not that it was always your fault. . .)
The graphic for this blog was definitely worth the read time. I am witness to the fact that after the chemical reaction you described, the pot will never be the same. Having tried it once, Joe & I have verified our original result twice more over the past 2 decades.
Say goodbye to Mr. Revere.
Mom