FYI:

I have been looking to increase vegetables and complex carbohydrates in my diet. Brown rice was a pain to cook on the stovetop, and I wanted to try things like amaranth and quinoa.

A $10 microwave steamer / grain cooker has turned it around. Timing is easy as it is built into use of the microwave and the results for brown rice and quinoa have been perfect.

Steaming vegetables has also become neater and cleaner.

I am not using and discarding plastic freezer bags, either.

Anybody else found a really handy kitchen device?

I found a small pressure cooker to be handy.
Stainless steel is best. They are a bit pricey but they can be very useful for cooking stuff like beans and the tougher cuts of meat.
They range from about $25 to $60 on Amazon though (big discounts), about the same price as a decent pot.

I am going to be looking for one of these M-wave steamers now Dweste.
Thanks for the tip because one of the hardest things here is teaching my relatives how to cook rice or other grains.

I had a microwave pressure cooker that worked great but the sailboat micro is too small for it.

Well this sounds like something I may like... if it makes cooking easier and cleaner

I like the idea of the microwave pressure cooker if for nothing else than time and definitely the low cost to get introduced to pressure cooking.