{"id":680,"date":"2013-03-13T17:56:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T00:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=680"},"modified":"2013-03-13T17:56:51","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T00:56:51","slug":"the-near-death-experience-of-fuzzy-logic-or-how-i-saved-181-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"The Near Death Experience of Fuzzy Logic, Or How I Saved $181 This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fuzzy Logic. That\u2019s the jargony term the Zojirushi <\/a>company uses for the magical way their rice cookers \u201cknow\u201d when the sticky rice is done just perfectly. We bought a Zojirushi rice cooker with said Fuzzy Logic <\/a>about 12 years ago when we bought our house. At the time I was dying because my husband insisted on getting a top of the line rice cooker, when I was just thinking of one of the $15 things we could get off one of the top shelves at Kmart or whatever. The Zojirushi cost more than $15. By a wide margin.<\/p>\n

However, it was worth every penny. We have used the rice cooker at least twice a week, sometimes 4x a week, for all 12 years. I love it. It\u2019s my favorite appliance ever.<\/i> Hands down. That Fuzzy Logic defies logic because it makes the best sticky rice, and perfect every single time.<\/p>\n

Until a month ago.<\/p>\n

And it failed me.<\/p>\n

The family was dumbfounded. Obviously, my kids instantly jumped to the conclusion that I\u2019d lost my touch and that I was now and forever more a terrible cook.<\/p>\n

Thanks, kids.<\/p>\n

But luckily my husband was more forgiving, although he did ask whether I added something odd to the batch or if I put in the right amount of rice. No, I made it the same way as always, a ratio of 1.5:1, water to rice, hit \u201cquick cook\u201d and voila! Yucky rice.<\/p>\n

Then it was fine a couple of times, including for Basmati rice. Then, dun, dun, dun. It happened again. Yucky rice, fuzzy logic on the fritz, bad dinner.<\/p>\n

Dinner was saved because the kids were willing to put the chicken sauce over steamed broccoli in lieu of rice (how can I be mad at kids that forgiving, even if they jump to wild conclusions?) However, there was great mourning throughout the land. The kids suggested a funeral for the rice cooker for family home evening. We could light candles and stuff. I was personally feeling so very sad, and almost cried. I know, that\u2019s dumb, but this rice cooker is very special to me, you know?<\/p>\n

Anyway, we looked up the price of a replacement cooker. Nowhere in our small town sells such a wonderful custom gadget as the Zojirushi, so it was the Internet or bust. We found a dealer selling one for $181. Man! I did not want to spend $181 on a rice cooker just now. No! This exacerbated the mourning.<\/p>\n

The next morning the kids asked when the funeral was. I put them off. I wasn\u2019t ready to let go. The thought of hauling it out to the trash hurt my heart. I dumped the bad batch of rice and let the appliance sit on the counter while I mulled a proper and fitting sayonara.<\/p>\n

The next morning I woke up before my alarm clock by a couple of minutes. Why does that happen? It just does. Anyway, my brain got thinking as I lay there in bed, and it hit me\u2014maybe the breakage didn\u2019t apply to the whole rice cooker. Maybe it just applied to the \u201cquick cook\u201d setting.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be like one of those last minute phone calls from the governor for the inmate on death row. I\u2019d intervene and stop the funeral proceedings. And I did. Anddddddd, it worked! The regular setting made perfectly fuzzily logical rice!<\/p>\n

So I made a second batch just to be sure. And it worked. And it was fine for the subsequent batches all last week. Hooray! The Zojirushi narrowly avoided a trip to the city dump, and we have delicious rice that takes just a bit longer to cook, and (thank you very much) I feel $181 richer. That might be fuzzy math <\/a>(a la George W Bush) but I’ll calculate it that way and be happy to.<\/p>\n\n

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Fuzzy Logic. That\u2019s the jargony term the Zojirushi company uses for the magical way their rice cookers \u201cknow\u201d when the sticky rice is done just perfectly. We bought a Zojirushi rice cooker with said Fuzzy Logic about 12 years ago when we bought our house. At the time I was dying because my husband insisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[303],"tags":[411,408,409,410],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-2","tag-family-anecdotes","tag-fuzzy-logic","tag-fuzzy-logic-2","tag-rice-cookers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-aY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":683,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}