Moving on...

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.