Sometimes when you're trying to live frugally, you have to assess what you currently have an work with those things. Here's one great way to utilize an appliance you may already have in ways you may have never thought of!

A rice cooker can really come in quite handy. The 7 things you can cook with a rice cooker are:

1. Macaroni and cheese – we cooked the pasta first, emptied any remaining water, then added milk and cream, cooked a few more minutes, then added the cheese and mixed it all up with the pasta and voila, mac & cheese!
2. Grits – so much easier in the rice cooker since I fill it with water and grits and wait for the cooker to ding! and then add a little more water if necessary and stir!
3. Farina (cream of wheat) – just like grits, fill with water and farina and set it and forget it! 
4. Pasta – just like mac and cheese, I cook the pasta, drain it and put in whatever I want it mixed with which was frozen veggies and sausage and let it sit in the cooker until the veggies and sausage are heated up. Then I served it with pasta sauce.
5. Boiled sweet potatoes – Many times I will cook sweet potatoes just for a snack and it’s super quick and easy to just clean the sweet potatoes and plop them in the pot of water and let it cook!
6. Steamed sweet potatoes – When I’m not so tired or in a rush to eat, I’ll cut it up or just slice it down the middle lengthwise and put it in the steamer insert and fill the bottom pot with water and steam the sweet potatoes.
7. Boiled water – it may seem silly to add this to my list but some may not think of something as simple as boiling water in the cooker. Since we don’t have a stove to use at the moment, this has worked quite well in having hot water for tea (or instant coffee) to drink! 

I haven’t done it yet, but also plan to use it for boiling eggs, and oatmeal. Like I mentioned in the list, my rice cooker comes with a steamer insert so I can add steamed veggies and even make steamed scrambled eggs (my mom made that a lot with some ground meat mixed in). And I also want to try to make steamed buns. I much prefer steamed buns over regular bread rolls.

There’s so much more I can think of now that I can do with the rice cooker. Anything you normally boil in water on the stove can be done in this cooker. The awesome thing is you don’t have to worry about over boiling the pot dry like I’ve done in the past where I forgot I had something on the stove and all the water was boiled away.

Sometimes when you need to think frugally, you have to first assess what you already have!

Do you have a rice cooker? Have you made anything else besides rice in yours?