I cleaned up this Christmas, taking home a ridiculously fancy rice maker, you know the kind that has all the bells and whistles: two timers, a computer chip that touts “fuzzy logic”, and, no joke, the ability to bake a cake. It even sings to you when your rice is ready, and I wish I was kidding. Short of mowing the lawn this thing can do everything and anything, including turn the girl that was addicted to pasta into the girl that eats rice with every meal.

I was always fairly hesitant to own a rice maker since I didn’t eat an overwhelming amount of rice, and even when I do it’s usually the boxed flavoured variety. Yet, I eat a lot of vegetables and often scramble to find something else to fill up my plate, something neutral, like a bread or a pasta or a potatoe. Then it dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t eating much rice because making rice was such a hassle. My pans never heated evenly, so my rice never cooked perfectly, plus it took a hefty 55 minutes to get white rice sufficiently done, an hour and half for brown rice. Maybe, just maybe, if I didn’t have to maintain constant vigilance over a bubbling batch of rice, then perhaps I might eat more of it.

Dead on. I absolutely love rice in a way I never thought was possible, all because of a fancy machine. I have the timer set so my rice is ready when I walk through the door (and still kept toasty if I’m even hours late), and it takes me about ten minutes to saute up some veggies or heat up some leftovers (Korean-style soup is my current favourite). Some nights I’ll throw in some lentils, vegetable stock, and onions, set the menu to “mixed rice” and go to the gym. When I’m stretched and showered, I’ve a hot meal at the ready, no prep involved. It really is a modern wonder.

Let’s talk about congee (okayu or juk) for a second. The porridge setting. Experimenting with this setting has led me to a world of breakfast foods I didn’t even know I was missing. A bowl of rice porridge is like a blank canvas just waiting for whatever you want to add — miso and green onion for a savoury start to your day, dried cranberries and apricots with cashews and a drizzle of honey for a sweeter tooth, a few bits of cheese and fresh tomatoe make for good lunch, while coconut milk and pistachios or mango is a belly-warming dessert. Not into the rice part? You can also make steel-cut oatmeal with maple, oats in cream of asparagus soup with cracked black pepper, or even non-instant grits for my comrades in the south. It’s been an easy, cost-effective, super filling and very versatile option for me this winter. I’d highly recommend giving this setting a try.

I liken the rice maker to a fancy coffee maker. You can always drip coffee the old-fashioned way, and sure a $20 contraption will do the trick for your morning brew, but if you’re making coffee every day, why not invest in a nicer model, one that say, grinds the beans for you, or has a timer so your coffee is ready ten minutes after your alarm goes off? Why not have something that can brew espresso too if you’re in the mood for a double dose of caffeine? It’s the same with rice. Sure you can make it on a stovetop just fine, but you can also just press a button instead and have it be not only ready, but perfectly cooked every time. Curry taking a bit longer than expected to reduce? Your rice maker probably has a “keep warm” function that makes sure the rice is still nice and hot without overcooking it into a hard mass of starch. It’s brilliant, really. If you’ve been in debate over whether the micom/micro computer makers were worth the money, take it from me, they’re worth every penny.

On my plate: okayu (rice porridge) with miso and green onion

Nong-Shim is a Korean food manufacturer known for their spicy instant noodles as well as a few varieties of shrimp crackers. When my local convenience store started carrying the brand along with the classic Japanese brands and the ever ubiquitous nissin cup-o-noodles, I thought I’d give their products a go to see if there was any validity to the “hot and spicy” promised on the packaging.

I picked up a few of the different offerings and started with the beef-flavoured cup (containing no actual beef, surprisingly) and I have to say, it’s much better than the atrocity I picked up last week: Maruchan’s Yakisoba. To begin with, the tiny cup holds a surprising amount of noodles, complete with lots of dried veggies, mostly green onions and mushrooms that rehydrated fully compared to the usual corn/carrot fare. You can see the sizable chunks in the pre-cooking shot below.

Generous flavour packet as well full of what was honestly a decently hot and spicy soup base. Sure it’s not tongue searing, but it certainly isn’t for the faint of heart and I personally find it pretty refreshing to have a bit of the good stuff in the instant noodle aisle. It was bright red, so from the get go I thought it promising.

Packaging is sturdier than your average instant noodle cup, more plastic than styrofoam, and the paper is coat to keep the water and steam in. I noticed the difference when the noodles were completely plump and ready before my 3 minute timer was up. I quite enjoyed the taste, and especially liked that you could add less of the flavour if you were sensitive to spice or worried about the nutritional intake. It’s pretty easy to spot in the bright red and black graphics, though not often easy to find. Much more popular are the company’s shrimp and “vegetal” flavoured Kimchi bowls.

Price wise, all the Nong-Shim products seem to rank about the same as the upscale and fancier instant noodle bowls, on par with something like Kraft easy mac or Chef Boyardee, though to my taste buds, far tastier (about 1.50 at my local 7eleven). Health-wise the Shin Cup also on par with other instant noodles, complete with 65% of your daily sodium intake, though the Shin Cup also has 2g protein and 12g of fiber, and 0 trans fat if you’re counting. Surprising for a convenience food, actually.

Overall I rate the shin cup pretty highly. I look forward to giving their packets of Yeul Ramyon and the larger Kimchi-flavoured noodle bowl a try soon. I’ll be sure to share my findings. But first, I have some noodles to finish!

On my plate: homemade pizza with yellow pepper, broccoli, cherry tomatoes, roasted garlic, and goat’s cheese

On my plate: delicious vegetable pot pie from wee feast

On my plate: “clash of the snacks” — chips with salsa, chile con queso, and quacamole, homemade bean and cheese nachos, onion rings and taquitos, blonde oreos, pretzels, and bagel bites, all washed down with a margarita and a Cowboys victory (not to mention Perseus and Laurence Olivier saving the world from a gaggle of angry Greek gods)

On my plate: ambiance and miso-glazed sea bass with house-made sweet chili sauce, nishiki rice, and baby bok choy from TenPenh. The complete meal consisted of vegetarian spring rolls with three dipping sauces (including black vinegar and spicy sesame), the sea bass, five-spice chocolate cake a la mode, and a surprisingly delicious mocktail with cranberry and pineapple juice, sprite, and passionfruit puree. All in all a worthwhile venture. Long live Restaurant Week.

On my plate: rigatoni with chunky neopolitana sauce, roasted garlic bread, and a salad of arugala, goats cheese, and warm roasted golden beetroot all dressed in lemon juice and olive oil

On my plate: marinated seaweed salad with sesame and yuzu, part of a sushi dinner completed by edamame, assorted nigiri, and ice cold Kirin Ichiban

I grew up a Texan girl in a world filled with tex-mex. Our regional fast food chain which, some think, can’t hold a candle to In-N-Out or Five Guys, serves honey butter biscuits, thick slices of texas toast with every meal combo, and awesome, slightly misnamed taquitos every night after 10pm. Nearly everyone frequents another regional chain, Taco Cabana, which kicks Taco Bell’s sorry behind into exile in Oklahoma, for quickie fajitas and to stave off al carbon cravings. We’re the kind of folks that won’t think twice about downing a late night carnitas taco, the real kind without that beans and rice filler and with plenty of punchy sauce, and then throw back two breakfast tacos hours later, when we finally sober up. The rest of the world has the anytime kebab, and we have the taco.

But in a world of tacos, sometimes you don’t want to wake up reminded that your amazing authentic tacos were made with lard, and while I can scarf anything Mama Ninfa or Yolanda can serve up by the light of day, sometimes I want a late night alternative that doesn’t leave me squirming by sunrise. Have you ever tried to sleep on a belly full of beans? It isn’t so easy, and that’s why, deep in the heart of Texas, hidden amid the myriad taco joints, is Mai’s.

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Seated in the 4th ward of Houston, Mai’s is a noodle standard and a midtown favourite that’s been around for well over twenty years. It was the first Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, so you know it has to be quality, and its 4am close time on weekends (3am regularly) means you can expect the college crowd just as readily as you can expect family outings from the city’s now sizable Vietnamese population. The joint’s variety isn’t just limited to its patronage; Mai’s menu is as diverse as it gets and caters to everyone from serious meat lovers to the seriously meat-free. It doesn’t mater if you’re riding the tail end of a night downtown, if you’re heading north from your usual stomping grounds, or if you’ve made a special trip from Sugarland, Mai’s is the place for your vermicelli and pho and even stir fry needs.

Pho Chay from Mai’s in Houston Texas

If you’ve never had the Vietnamese version of noodles, vermicelli, you’re in for a treat. Vermicelli is a bowl of often cold and translucent rice noodles, spun thin like glass, piled high in a bowl, and topped with a carmelised pile of pungent meats, vegetables, and tofu. You can be a master of the chopstick, but once you pour on the slightly spicy sauce that comes with vermicelli, reminiscent of the sweet chili sauce Australians are so obsessed with, chances are you’ll be chasing around the slippery noodles for ever unless you just give up and do the “lift and shovel” maneouver everyone else in the shop is doing. Forget your Southern etiquette, Mai’s is a place for slupring and shoveling and smiling and verily enjoying your vermicelli, or any other kind of noodle encounter the powerhouse seems to provide. You can call it radical, you can call it regular, you can call it dinner, but any way you twirl it it’s another step in the great noodle march forward.