Wisdom Teeth and After

I had my wisdom teeth taken out today. Two. If you don't want to know the gory details skip the rest and go onto the next paragraph. What hurt most during it was actually the four massive anaesthetic needles that got stuck into my gums, the rest was okay, just a lot of drilling and whirring etc involved. The one on the top was simple enough but the one on the bottom jaw was kind of at a 60 degree angle to upright, and part of its roots were embedded in my jawbone. Basically what happened next was part of my gum was cut through so my dentist could chisel off a bit of bone to take the tooth out. Okay enough of that.

I have top-up analgesic (ooh that's a cool word, basically it means to stop the pain) pills which had to be taken before 1.30pm otherwise my wound (which is still bleeding) would hurt like hell, and I was told I had to have food before. So I threw together the quickest yet most edible food in my disabled state in record time. I found some cooked leftover rice in the fridge, and along with that some chicken stock pots. I boiled some water, threw everything into a saucepan, stirred, stirred and stirred and half an hour later I had congee ready to eat.

I used to hate plain congee when I was a kid. And to this day I'm still quite picky about congee - if it's literally just rice and water i will refuse to eat it. The chicken stock added some flavour into it without actually having to chop up a whole chicken, plus I wouldn't have been able to bite into any meat anyway.

The following recipe is a very improvised recipe as you kind of add water along the way depending on the viscosity. Also I cheated and used rice that was already cooked, which is why it only took me 20 minutes. Normally it takes around 30 - 45 minutes for some really smooth and fluffy congee using raw grains of rice.

Plain Congee

1 cup of rice

approx 1L boiling water

1/2 - 1 chicken stock pot (or cube)

1.   Put the rice into a saucepan and add around 100ml of cold water. Bring to boil, then stir continuously, adding around 250ml boiling water at the same time.

2.   Add another 250ml boiling water and the chicken stock, then cover half the saucepan with the lid and reduce the heat to medium or low and allow it to simmer for about 15 minutes. Remember to keep checking to make sure it doesn't overflow and stir it once every 3-5 minutes.

3.    Depending on how you like your congee, add boiling water and continue to stir to make sure the congee doesn't stick to the bottom of the saucepan and burn.