Made vindaloo last night, and as it was just about finished, I started up the rice cooker. After it beeped at the end of it's somewhat suspiciously-fast cycle, I opened the lid. "Damnit", I said, as I opened the rice cooker and see standing water with all of the rice still at the bottom. Every so often our rice cooker does this. So, I close the lid, and run it again, which has always finished a 2nd rice-cooking cycle with satisfactory results.
The unit beeped, I open the lid, and....still in a bath of water. Oh oh...this hasn't happened before. So, I close the lid, start another cycle hoping for the best...but then also decide to make couscous as a back-up. I put a cup of water in the microwave, pour a cup of couscous* into a bowl, and pour the boiling water over the couscous*. But something doesn't seem quite right. "Oh well", I thought. I hadn't made couscous in a little while and just thought I mis-remembered how it was supposed to stir after adding the water. Covered it with a plate, and set a timer for 5 minutes.
After the 5 minutes was up, I took off the plate and...discovered almost entirely-un-cooked, crunchy quinoa. Remember that "*" I put after "couscous" above? It's because I grabbed the wrong orange zip-topped plastic bag filled with cream-colored tiny grains, and put quinoa into the bowl rather than the couscous.
So i put a cover back on the quinoa and try to finish cooking that in the microwave after adding additional water.
Meanwhile I go to check on the rice which has just beeped for the 3rd cycle (and I'm not optimistic because I didn't hear the normal "gurgling" that comes from a proper cycle), and I find under-cooked rice at the top, mushy rice in the middle, and over-cooked rice at the bottom.
I turn to the microwave as I start to hear burps and pops and a rattling plate, and find that the quinoa has boiled over. Now there's crusty quinoa stuck to the microwave turn-table, and running down the side of the bowl.
So by this point, the 11-hour vindaloo has gone cold, it's almost 10pm, we have rice cooked very badly 3 different ways, and quinoa with a blend of both mush and crunch.