Article

2005-03-10 Caribbean-Latin America

Chinese Rice Cookers: Women's Day Gift from Castro

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Posted by tu3031 2005-03-10 9:36:21 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 "...a five-hour 45-minute speech..."
"...two hours talking about the merits of pressure cookers..."
I don't know about the whole speech, but the two hours on pressure cookers surely qualifies him for a new job in the EU bureaucracy.

Posted by Tom 2005-03-10 10:32:03 AM|| 2005-03-10 10:32:03 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Oprah gives away better presents, and her audience only has to sit through an hour taping.

Posted by Desert Blondie 2005-03-10 11:28:26 AM|| [http://azjetsetchick.blogspot.com] 2005-03-10 11:28:26 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Castro just "Jumped The Shark"

Posted by Yosemite Sam 2005-03-10 11:28:50 AM|| 2005-03-10 11:28:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Woman: A rice cooker. Oh, you shouldn't have, Your Excellency.

Castro: My pleasure. Anything to further the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Woman: Pardon me, Your Most Maximum Jefe. Does this thing come with rice?

Castro (to bodyguard): Have this capitalist running dog shot.

Posted by Dreadnought 2005-03-10 11:35:18 AM|| 2005-03-10 11:35:18 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 The 78-year-old leader spent two hours talking about the merits of pressure cookers.

Chauncey Gardner is alive and well in Havana...

Posted by BigEd 2005-03-10 12:04:01 PM|| 2005-03-10 12:04:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Another report adds a different slant: The program could wipe out what has become a popular, and in most cases legal, private business that uses molds to make pressure cookers from cheap aluminum. Although imported cookers are sold in stores for about $25 - more than the average Cuban earns in a month - homemade ones cost about $5.50. At subsidized prices, the government-distributed cookers will cost about the same as the homemade ones. And the government's cookers can be paid for in monthly installments.

The government began moving last year to trim the already small number of people legally allowed to work for themselves. Cuba was forced to allow some private business beginning in the mid-1990s amid an economic crisis in the years after the withdrawal of Soviet aid and trade. Those modest reforms were seen as temporary, but necessary, evils.

But after a slow recovery, recent discoveries of oil deposits off Cuba's coast and economic alliances with Venezuela and China, Castro clearly believes the island is strong enough to return to a more centralized economy.

Posted by Steve 2005-03-10 3:24:06 PM|| 2005-03-10 3:24:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Great! How about some rice?

Posted by Estella y Habana 2005-03-10 4:18:29 PM|| 2005-03-10 4:18:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Is it THAT DIFFICULT to cook rice on a stovetop?

And the Japanese make the best rice cookers, not the Chinese.

Posted by gromky 2005-03-10 10:23:33 PM|| 2005-03-10 10:23:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Way back when I was 8 or so, when we first moved from New Orleans to Acadiana, my mom was at the grocery when someone mentioned in passing that the brand of rice she was shopping for "didn't stick together right..."

Posted by Phil Fraering 2005-03-10 10:53:13 PM|| [http://newsfromthefridge.typepad.com] 2005-03-10 10:53:13 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Lol, DN!

Thai Jasmine be da best.

Posted by .com 2005-03-10 10:59:07 PM|| 2005-03-10 10:59:07 PM|| Front Page Top

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