Death by Toasted Bread

Tonight, we say farewell to our rice cooker.

This trusty appliance has served us well since I was in college up until a few hours ago when it decided to end its usability with a bang. A literal one.

Let it be known that its last hurrah was toasted bread. Luz was about to unplug it from the socket when it made a bright spark (Luz maintains it to be an "explosion", but that's really just taking it a wee bit far). Instinctively, she took a quick step back, but it only occurred to her that the spark/explosion was electrical when she turned and found me frantically looking around and asking her where the circuit breaker was. 

We managed to find it behind the cupboard then I switched all the levers off, and while Luz held the flashlight, I unplugged the aberrant rice cooker cord with the help of a leather belt (just to be on the safe and paranoid side). Later on, we found Luz's right hand with dark streaks of black soot caused by the blowup just like the ones I had as a kid when I had my run-ins with anything electrical.

We've been roommates for more than a year and a half, and yes, our room is still in one piece.

And so we offer a moment of silence for our unusable rice cooker and all those years of service, not only in the field of rice-cooking but in all manners of culinary dorm-room skills. People still can't believe we pulled off a Kare-kare using it.