Rice Cooker Spanish Rice

Source: a compilation of a few different recipes from my mom, my rice cooker instruction manual, and this place on the great internet

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1 green pepper, chopped
2 cups rice, uncooked
1 1/2 - 2 cups water
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 14.5 oz can Mexican style stewed tomatoes, with juice
1/4 cup salsa
1 4 oz small can diced green chiles
2 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp cumin
shredded cheese, to top with if desired

Directions:
Brown hamburger and onion (if you have a fancy-dancy "saute-then-simmer" mode on your rice cooker, you can do it right in the rice cooker.  If not, just use a frying pan on the stove) and season with garlic powder.  Then add rest of ingredients.  Stir.  Then let your rice cooker do it's magic (just set it to run as you would normally cook your rice).  If it's not quite done when the cycle is through, add more water and let it cook a little longer.  (We started with 1 cup, but had to add an additional cup and let the machine do another "white rice" cycle.)

Notes:
This is the first thing I've attempted to make in my brand new birthday rice cooker (even before just regular rice!) and I thought it would be kind of fun.  I love how super easy it is to just throw it all in the pot and leave it, but we found that it does take longer than just one cycle on our "white rice" setting (~ 1 hour cook time ... we're also still experimenting with the "saute-then-simmer" setting on this new machine).  But it sure smells heavenly while it's cooking (the young men who came to the door while we were putting it together commented on it) and (my favorite part) there's no boiling over on the stove!  Oh, and it tastes pretty darn good, too.