Mom's Rice Cakes

A few days ago, my friend Kim asked us to describe a favorite childhood meal. My friends mentioned things like fried chicken or pork chops, and I casually mentioned that my mom made rice cakes.

Sara: "What...is that?"

Me: "What are rice cakes?"

Jackie: "You mean those hard things you toast and slather peanut butter on?"

Renne: "Or do you mean something like arancini?"

Me: "My mom takes leftover rice, mixes it with an egg and a little bit of flour, and fries it into little rice fritters that she dumps a lot of salt on. This isn't something that other people's moms do? I assumed it was like a regular mom dish."

In discussing it with other friend groups this week, it turns out that nobody's mom made these. I was asked a few times if I meant arancini, but these didn't have a breadcrumb coating, and they weren't round. They were like little patties, crispy on the edges and soft in the middle, and each time I explained them nobody seemed to know what I was talking about.

I was surprised by this, because my mom's rice cakes are the meal I remember best from childhood.

My mom is a good cook, but my mom is also a home cook, which means that a lot of her recipes involve pinches, dashes, and just knowing by looking if something is the right consistency or if it needs a little more flour. She makes lots of things well, and many nights she made two dinners because I was such a picky eater, so I remember getting a lot of things that were variations on other things: white pizza, sauceless lasagna, spaghetti with olive oil and garlic instead of red sauce, etc. I remember the rice cakes as a treat, though, something we usually only got on weekends and not every weekend. In my head, my mom made them out of leftover rice from dinner, but I think she actually made rice just to make these.

Last time I attempted to make these was in 2007, and they did not come out as well as I remember Mom's. In retrospect, I overanalyzed Mom's recipe, and tried to make it exact when it's not really an exact sort of process. Ten years later, I am a better, more confident cook, so I decided to ask Mom for the recipe again and give these another try.

Now that I have, here's an updated recipe, which I have been given permission to share:

2 cups of cooked rice (however much one cup of uncooked rice makes)
2 eggs, beaten
3 tablespoons of flour
a pinch of sugar
a pinch of salt

Leave the salt container out, because you're going to need it again.

1) Put your rice in a bowl.



If you have a Pyrex bowl of any sort, that's best, but if you don't then just use whatever mixing bowl you have.

2) Mix everything together.



I mixed the eggs, sugar, and salt in first, then mixed the flour in after.

3) Heat 1/8-1/4 of an inch of oil in a frying pan with decently high sides. The oil is going to spit a little, and you don't want it all over the stovetop. I set the heat exactly between medium and high. You want these to get crispy on the edges, but not so hot that they brown too fast.

4) Spoon the rice mixture into the oil and use the back of the spoon to flatten it. It should look like a little patty.



5) When the edges look golden brown, turn it over and let it cook for about another minute. (It won't take as long as the first side because that side partially cooked while the other side was cooking, like pancakes do.)

6) Using a slotted spatula, remove it from the oil, let it drain for a few seconds, and then put it on a plate that's covered in paper towels and immediately sprinkle salt on top.



7) Now that you've built up your confidence by doing it right one time, start making more than one at once.



It makes about this many rice cake, plus two that I ate while I was making the others:



If you're trying to cut salt out of your diet, try adding something to the batter to flavor these, like chives or a spice blend.

Also, eat them while they're still warm, or room temperature. If you put them in the fridge to get cold, they get kind of gummy, and I have no idea how to reheat these.

All the things I saw in Atlanta

I'll be leaving Atlanta in the morning, having survived a harrowing five minute ordeal of near death elevator riding, and since it's unlikely that I will see more sights before then, I will do a quick rundown of the things that I did see.

I didn't do much sightseeing on this trip, since the conference schedule was pretty tight, but a friend and I did walk down to the Centennial Olympic Park one free morning, since it was only a half mile from our hotel. There, we saw the Olympic fountain:



the Ferris wheel that Atlanta has for some unknown reason, despite not having a scenic skyline or any major landmarks that need to be seen from the air:





the College Football Hall of Fame:



the World of Coke, which is a museum of Coca Cola:



and includes a statue of Coke's inventor:



and a statue that I thought was interesting:





but also vaguely unsettling.

Later that day, after lunch, we took my friend Lauren to see the Marriot, which I've stayed in and which you might recognize as the tribute training center from the "Hunger Games" movies:



On Tuesday night we went to a dinner where the chicken had bones in it:



and I ate it anyway even though food with bones in it is a struggle for me.

On Wednesday the conference wrapped up in mid-afternoon. They organized some groups to go to the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coke, but I didn't want to go to either of those things since I've been to both, and my friend Andrea and I went to the Center for Civil And Human Rights instead.







It was a moving, powerful afternoon, and I think our time was much better spent there than if we'd gone to the soda museum next door.

On Thursday morning I drove over to my friend Sandy's house, where I've been ever since. We've run around to antique stores and restaurants and gone on errands, but haven't really done a lot of sightseeing, unless you count the things in Sandy's neighborhood that PokemonGo tells me are sights, like the Morris Farmhouse Ruins:





and the Field View Meeting Shelter:





Oh, and I also saw this mailbox shaped like a cat:



which I think the tail broke off of.

This wasn't really a sightseeing trip, but I'm glad I got out to see something, and to catch up with so many friends.

Hellevator

Last night, I was stuck in an elevator for approximately three minutes.

To get out of it, I had to jump through doors that had been pried open by an elevator technician, which seemed unsafe and possibly deadly.

Before that, I had to drive to Atlanta.

I've been in Atlanta since Sunday, when I came down for a conference. Since it's only a few hours from Knoxville, I drove rather than flew, and that was an adventure in itself, as it taught me two things: my car hates Chattanooga; and when robots take over the world, they will use the navigation system in my car to kill me and I will allow it because just driving where the car says is easier than arguing.

I started Sunday on campus, because I needed to drop something off for someone else to have on Monday, and when I was leaving I programmed the hotel's address in. I know how to get to Atlanta, but I didn't know how to get to the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel, where the conference was. The trouble started when I was driving from my office to Cumberland Avenue, to get onto I-75.

"In 400 feet, turn left onto Andy Holt Avenue."

"I can't. That's not a street anymore." It's not. That part of Andy Holt Avenue was closed and turned into a walkway several years ago. Also, don't pretend you've never talked to the navigation system in your car when it talks to you.

"Turn left."

"I can't."

"If possible, make a legal U-turn, and then turn right onto Andy Holt Avenue."

"I can't! I'm just going to get on Cumberland!"

"Make a legal U-turn."

"I CAN'T!"

"Why aren't you making the legal U-turn, Joel? Do you even want to get to Atlanta?"

Lois Lane, the car, freaks out if you have the navigation on and don't do exactly what it says. Because of that, I went ahead and did exactly what Lois said for the rest of the day, which is why, as I followed I-75 south to Atlanta, I listened to the car when it told me to get off of I-75 at Cleveland, Tennessee. I followed one road, then another, then another, and then on the far side of Chattanooga Lois told me to get back on I-75. For reasons completely unknown to me (traffic? construction? Lois' intense and previously unknown hatred for the city that invented the MoonPie and the tow truck?), we detoured completely around Chattanooga rather than driving through it.

I realize now that Lois was just testing me, and lulling me into falsely believing she knew best, so that she could trick me into driving her directly into the seething traffic filled heart of downtown Atlanta.

"Bear left."

"I'M TRYING, BUT NO ONE WILL LET ME OVER!"

"Bear right and continue on I-75, then bear left."

"Still on I-75? I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO!"

"Bear right."

"OK. I'm bearing right."

"Your destination is ahead on the left."

"GOD DAMN IT, LOIS! THIS ROAD IS FOUR LANES WIDE! WHY AM I BEARING RIGHT THEN?"

"Kill all humans."

When I finally arrived at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel, I decided not to move the car again until Thursday. I should have also decided not to stay at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel, because the overall hotel experience was not good. In no particular order:

1) My friends Myrinda and Alison found someone else's panties in their room.

2) My friend Aaron tried to eat at the hotel bar the night he got in and could not. He sat at the bar for fifteen minutes and then left, because the bartender didn't come over and the manager passed him twice and waved. I'm shocked that the manager didn't come over, since I ate at the same bar the same night, alone with a book, and the manager came over to talk to me six times while I was eating despite the open book in front of me.

3) There was some elevator drama in the north tower. Besides the freight elevator, which was hidden around a corner and down a hallway, the north tower has a bank of three elevators. Two of these elevators were out of service for the duration of my four night stay, with the exception of last night when the right hand elevator was briefly back on.

Just long enough for me to get stuck in it.

I got on the elevator on the second floor lobby level, and pressed six. As I passed the third floor, I thought, "Hey, I don't think the elevators doors are all the way closed. That seems bad." Before I could think anything else about it, the elevator reached the fourth floor, where it stopped moving, but the doors didn't open. I pushed the door open button, but they still didn't open. I pushed the four button, then the six button again, and still nothing. I pushed the alarm button, but it just rang a bell until I stopped pushing the button. Then I saw the "call" button on the opposite panel.

"How may I help you?"

"I'm in elevator three, and it's stuck on the fourth floor."

"Are you inside it?"

How the hell do you imagine I'm pushing the call button from outside the elevator, lady? "Yes."

"In elevator four?"

"No. I am in elevator number three, on floor number four."

"How do you know what floor it's on?"

"The display says four."

"OK. I'll call someone."

And that was it. No offer to stay on the line, no asking if I was ok, nothing. Whoever she called must have been close, though, because I had enough time to post that I was stuck on Facebook, but not enough time to tweet it, when suddenly the doors were pried open.

And I actually mean pried.

The Otis elevator technician's fingers pulling the doors apart were the first thing I saw.

When the doors opened, I was looking down at him, because the floor of the elevator was about two feet above the fourth floor hallway.

"Sir, are you ok?"

"I'm stuck. The elevator is stuck."

"Yeah. I need you to jump down here."

"...out of the elevator?"

"Yeah. I'll hold your hands, and you jump into me. I'll catch you."

"I have to jump out of the elevator? I COULD DIE."

I'm not going to lie: I started freaking out, worse than the car does when you don't follow the navigation directions or you let the air in one of the tires get low. You know how people die in stuck elevators? They die trying to get out of the stuck elevator. They try to climb to the next floor, or jump to the one below, and they fall into the shaft instead and die. My friends, especially my friends Keri and Sandy, have discussed this for years. Google says 26-30 people die this way in the US every year, and my heart said one of those people could be me.

"Jump, sir. I'm right here. Just jump."

"What’s below the elevator floor? Am I gonna slip and fall into the shaft? BECAUSE THAT’S HOW PEOPLE DIE GETTING OUT OF STUCK ELEVATORS."

"We have it blocked off, sir. Jump into me. I’ll catch you."

To prove his point, he kicked something below the floor of the elevator. I couldn't see what it was, but I could hear his foot colliding with something, so I took his hands, and jumped into him. It turns out that the elevator car has a metal apron that reaches down about two feet, so it covered most, but not all, of the space between the bottom of the car and the hallway floor. No sooner than I was out of the elevator than I was confronted by a hotel security officer.

"How did you get into the elevator, sir? Because they’re working on that one."

"I PUSHED THE BUTTON IN THE LOBBY AND THE DOORS OPENED. HOW DO YOU IMAGINE I GOT INTO IT?"

I didn't even have to add "I could have died" before he was offering to escort me to the front desk and comp me a meal. Since I didn't want to eat dinner in the hotel again, I requested free breakfast, and the front desk manager promised that he would leave a note at the restaurant that my breakfast was comped.

This morning the restaurant didn't have that note, and I had to loudly explain to the manager in front of the other diners that I had been promised that my breakfast would be comped because I was trapped in their elevator and could have died. She went ahead and gave me the free breakfast after that.

They only had waffles, though, and no pancakes.

Because the Sheraton Hotel Atlanta is a terrible place.