Yes, I know Steamyest isn’t correct spelling, but I don’t like the way “Steamiest” just looks stupid. Do you see why I barely squeaked through grade school??

If I wasn’t doing this food thing professionally, my husband would think I was having a steamy love affair with the UPS guy, FedEx man and the Postwoman. Every day it’s like and I’m rushing like mad to see what sort of goodies I’m getting.

Sometimes, they are cookbooks for me to review, new products to try and lovely gifts from friends. It sure lessens the sting of all the other crap I get in the mail, like bills.

With all these cool things to try and review, there’s bound to be stuff that I don’t like – and therefore I don’t write about it. I classify things in 3 lumps:

1) Shitty

2) So-so but maybe you’d like (even if I didn’t)

3) Outrageously fabulous

The shitty stuff I don’t bother writing about. Oh there have been plenty. But I decided not to waste ink or pixels on stuff I just plain don’t like. Which is why you never saw a post on these big black balls.

With my personality, there’s very few things that are middle ground, I usually have a love/not love relationship with most things. I LOVE Storyville Coffee, covet real soy sauce, savor black garlic and cannot be without my friend Michelle’s all-natural carrot sweetened hot sauces.

And I always share cool bounty with my friends. Trust me when I say it’s good to live within a 60 mile radius of my home.

But I have more great swag to share than I have friends that live close by. Wait. That didn’t sound right. Let’s just put it this way – ME WANT GIVE YOU STUFF…STEAMY STUFF!

Don’t worry, I’m not giving away the shitty stuff – those usually end up at Goodwill or the trash. (I wonder what Goodwill did with the big black balls?) See these books? I love them, some of them I have two of. So, in order to make room for more stuff, husband says I have to give them away or he’ll call an exterminator (he no likey when I creep into his garage space with my “stuff”)

I’ll be giving away something every single week to my loyal email subscribers. Why just my email subscribers? Because I figure if you’re that generous to share your inbox with me, I’d love to reward you. I only email out once a week with what’s new with Steamy Kitchen (basically my email newsletter) and I’ll randomly pick a winner (or two, or three) from the subscriber list and announce right then and there. For my international friends, you’re included too! We’ll have to keep the international prizes to things that are reasonably shippable (like cookbooks) and won’t have customs officials knockin’ at my door.

And to make it extra sweet – my first prize is a mac-daddy Induction Heating System Rice Cooker from Zojirushi!

THE $289 MAC-DADDY RICE COOKER From Zojirushi’s website: “The Induction Heating System Rice Cooker & Warmer uses high-tech Induction Heating (IH) method to heat the inner cooking pan. Because of this new heating method, rice cooks exceptionally well. This IH Rice Cooker also features easy-to-clean clear coated stainless steel exterior, healthy cooking options such as brown rice, GABA BROWN and germinated brown rice settings, and an interchangeable melody and beep signal. Other features include automatic keep warm, extra large LCD display for Clock and Timer functions and detachable inner lid.” This baby does everything: sweet rice, quick rice (shortens rice cooking time by about 20%) brown rice, sushi rice, porridge, mixed rice. And for white rice – there are settings for soft-med-hard, depending on what texture you like it. If this thing vibrated, it would be at home on your nightstand.

WOWZA! This fancy 5 1/2 cup induction rice cooker that Amazon sells for $289 and just for being my friend, I’m giving one away. It’s been used a handful of times for product testing, but other than that, it’s brand-spankin’ new. The Induction Heating thingy means that your rice will cook evenly via induction heat throughout the until (instead of a hot plate on bottom like most rice cookers) Plus the whole GABA brown setting makes brown rice even healthier because it germinates the brown rice first before cooking. Basically, this thing is like a COMPUTER.

VA-VA-VA-VOOOOM!!!

Can you tell I love this rice cooker!? I’m tempted to keep it…but too late now, huh?