How do you know dinner is nearly ready in an Island household?

The smell of steaming rice.

No matter how you cook it, in a pot on the stove, in a rice cooker, in the microwave, there's this starchy smell and you know: It's almost time, get cleaned up, dinner's almost ready.

This elusive scent is difficult to describe. "Starchy" is the best I can do — kinda sweet, kinda gluey, definitely comforting, if you're from here and have eaten rice with almost every meal since you were a baby. I've been at this for 30-something years and one of the biggest challenges for a food writer is translating a sensual thing into words. All you can do is compare flavors or textures to other things people might recognize.

But the smell of rice? You have to know it. It's unmistakable if you do. It says home. It says Mom or Grandma. It says comfort. Sometimes the smell floats up from our downstairs neighbors' apartment and I want to go knock on the door and say "Whatchu cookin'?"

In Japan, rice is often accorded an honorific before its name, o-gohan. The term can also be translated as "meal." If I was asked what meal I would like to eat as my last on earth, it would be rice and some good gravy. My uncles in the South don't think they've eaten if there isn't white bread on the table. I don't think I've eaten if there isn't rice.

We know now we shouldn't eat too much rice, especially if it's white rice (and brown rice, nice as it is, doesn't have quite the same smell). My doctor says you might as well serve up a scoop of sugar, which is essentially what a refined carbohydrate is.

I was thinking of these things as I cooked the rice for dinner last night and the scent of the rice boiling triggered me to get up and go put the microwave on again (in the micro, 1 cup rice to 1 1/4 cup water, rice is cooked in two phases: on high for 4-5 minutes, then on 40 to 50 percent for 4-5 minutes). For the cook, the smell of rice says, check the rest of the dishes, get the salad tossed, start the stir-fry.

For many who grew up poor in Hawai'i, rice was the center of the plate. We had to portion out the protein. There might not be much else on the table but rice. It was cheap. It filled the belly. If we were lucky and had a garden, or a generous neighbor, a little oil and some shoyu, salt and sugar and maybe some fish from Dad's after-work or weekend excursions made a stir-fry. Or maybe there was a can of tuna or salmon or corned beef to divide among us, with the garden vegetables or a bunch of chopped cabbage (which, when I was young, cost 5 cents a pound; I'm not kidding). It was all we could afford to pair with that rice.

But the rice made it work.