A friend of mine in college bought a 1L beaker (*) and used it as a small cookpot. Macaroni was fun, 'cause you could watch the convection currents carrying the pasta up and down.

(*) I'm not sure whether the dispensary let us buy our own chemistry equipment (the only time I had to go there was to pay for a beaker I'd broken), but he worked for the professor who ran the orgo lab.