Just heard from my bro, he's home now, mission accomplished. It's amazing how the cost of dying & transferring everything-you-can't-take-with-you is milked, especially in California. The auntie who died in the Philippines was cremated, interned, and all her bequests completed within a week of her death. ONE WEEK! And she had a house! And her will was verbal ! OMG, California auntie's will was handwritten, must be verified & testified to, and will be milked for up to a year. I think my dad listened to me & bro, spent all his money and already disbursed all his real & personal property before he died. Whatever's left over in the banks is inconsequential (no inheritance tax).
So I'm finally jumping on the fad. I GOT AN INSTANT POT. Every year, my company gives us $50 gift card at Thanksgiving. It's always been to a grocery store but this year it was to Target. Since (Cali) auntie died, I've been getting rid of my own stuff that I haven't used in a long time. I got rid of two crock pots -- they've never worked for me because I can't sleep when I smell food cooking. But it's not a crock pot, it's a modernized pressure cooker. Some models have wifi monitoring.
Growing up, Mom did not spend the whole day in the kitchen. She did everything in her pressure cooker. When I moved out on my own, I preferred the oven. If you couldn't cook it (anything) in the oven, I wasn't interested. Along the way I got interested in wok cooking so I started doing stuff on the stove top. That and Alton Brown's 90's show lead me back to the pressure cooker. It was cool, but it wasn't all that. I hated how the steam would depressurize against the wall, against the wood cabinets, etc. I tried the quicker depressurizing method in the sink. I eventually took out the gasket and just used it as a big pot. Now I understand why mom left her pressure cooker on the stove for so long. I never had that kind of time, that's what the valve was for!
First run today. I did my recipe for beef barley soup. Normally I would need my two biggest pots for this. One for the beef (so that beef keeps softening after I get some broth for the veg), one for the veg to speed up the process, then it's reused to cook the barley. Success, though it yielded half as much as I usually get. Con: I've gotten so used to more heart healthy methods. I'd have to stop this cooking process half way/overnight if I really wanted to separate the fat from the beef broth. Pro: Because it would shut off automatically (unlike crock pots) I actually left the house to run 2 hours of errands after I put all the ingredients together and left it to stew. It was depressurized by the time I got back.
I was actually going to get a thermal cooker. Another one-pot method that I can just put together then leave it to cook, soften meat, and not burn because it's off the heat. I went with instant pot first because I can walk away sooner in the process. Plus, I've inherited so much sticky rice, I need a big rice cooker. With the thermal cooker, you have to bring it up to boil for a few minutes before you can put it in the thermal outer pot and walk away.
Peconic River Herb Farm Shed
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Like the painting posted yesterday, this painting was started on site but
finished at home. My plein air group went to one of my favorite places, the
Pe...
22 hours ago