Roger Ebert Gives Pot Two Thumbs Up

Since 2002, Roger Ebert has been fighting thyroid cancer. In 2006, he lost a portion of his jaw. Even though Tonic reported that he regained his ability to speak earlier this year, Ebert still can't chew his food — but don't think the film critic gave up his lust for culinary adventures.

In 2008, Ebert wrote about the seemingly retro rice cooker in his Chicago Sun-Times column. That two-year-old topic has evolved into a cookbook of the same name. On Sept. 21, 2010, Ebert will add the word "chef" to his resume when The Pot and How to Use It hits bookshelves.

"To be sure, health problems have prevented me from eating," Ebert writes in the book. "That did not discourage my cooking. It became an exercise more pure, freed of biological compulsion."

But why a rice cooker? Why not the food processor? The Huffington Post reports that Ebert received the kitchen appliance as a wedding present in 1992 and has been in a love affair with his wife Chaz and the rice cooker ever since.

"We used to take the rice cooker almost everywhere we went," Chaz Ebert said, even to the famous Sundance Film Festival. "[Cooking] is something that he has always loved, so it's not for him that if 'I can't taste it and eat it and swallow it then I'm not interested.' For Roger, it's very much his family, his friends and the people around him. He's there's for it. He loves it."

Photo by PR Photos.