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I'm an ordinary office worker, working nine to five every day. When I get home, what I love most is tinkering with food in the kitchen. I'm not a food blogger; I simply enjoy the sense of satisfaction that comes from cooking with my own hands. However, when it comes to those "little annoyances" in the kitchen, rice definitely ranks among the top three.

When I first moved out to live alone, my mom insisted on buying me a 5kg bag of rice. She, bless her heart, thought, "How can you not have rice at home? Buy enough at once to save trips!" I didn't think much of it at the time and carried that heavy bag of rice home. My kitchen isn't big, with limited counter space, and that bag of rice, once placed in a corner, took up half the area. Every time I cooked, I had to carefully scoop out a little from the large rice bag, afraid of spilling it. But no matter how careful I was, a few grains of rice would always mischievously pop out, landing on the counter, on the floor, and eventually in the trash. And that wasn't even the most annoying part.

The bigger problem was that for one person, 5kg of rice really lasts a long time. I'm not someone who cooks rice every day; sometimes I work overtime, sometimes I order takeout, so the rice gets consumed very slowly. After about a month or so, I noticed some dampness at the bottom of the rice bag, and a few times, I even saw some tiny rice weevils. Although I knew this was a natural phenomenon, it still bothered me a bit. Every time before cooking, I had to rinse the rice several times, always feeling like it wasn't clean enough. One time, my mom called to ask if I had finished the rice. I told her there was still a large portion left, and she was a bit surprised: "Why so slow? Aren't you cooking properly?" I stammered out a reply, but in my heart, I was thinking that at this rate, probably half of that bag of rice would go to waste.

During that time, I often worried about that bag of rice. I couldn't eat it all, nor could I bring myself to throw it away. One evening, I invited my college roommate, Xiao Li, over for dinner. He watched me scoop rice from a huge bag and couldn't help but tease, "How much rice have you hoarded? Are you planning