cooking

666(X3) ≠ 42

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

The Instant Pot arrived with a blast. 

In nanoseconds, my social media feeds were filled with folks I respect singing the praises of the Instant Pot. 

Photo by Katherine Chase on Unsplash

I am no slouch in the kitchen; I own nearly every kitchen gadget in existence.  But after roughly 30 years of putting dinner on the table every evening unless I was hospitalized or had a pizza coupon, I was just over it. 

Even a viral new gadget was not enough to tempt me. 

Especially that one.

Near as I can figure, the Instant Pot is the New Millennium’s restyling of the pressure cooker my dad used for years. 

I was terrified of that thing. 

It started out innocently enough. A pot roast, some seasoning, and a few other secret ingredients were combined for a period much shorter than conventional pot roasting and turned out a plateful of wonderful.  But to get to wonderful, I had to get through the rattling brass regulator that, at a certain stage, would start screaming while the heavy pan rocked and rolled in jeopardy of falling off the stove.

My dad, an artillery expert in the United States Marine Corps, would tell us to step back using his Captain Kinsey voice when he opened the pressure cooker.

I didn’t have to be told.  Anything that made those movements and those sounds on a stovetop in suburban America circa 1971 was surely one of the demons released in William Peter Blatty’s runaway best seller, The Exorcist.

There was never a problem when my dad used the pressure cooker, aside from my stress response.  I had heard tales.  I knew facts. From where?  I have no idea.  Why or how a 12-year-old would be well-versed in pressure cooking cautions and disasters before Google is a mystery.

And so, my feed continued to be full of the awe of my friends who had received an Instant Pot for Christmas or Mother’s Day or their birthday, or because it was a doorbuster special on Black Friday.  They shared results with photos, noting the cooking time with squeals. They traded recipes they had adapted. Whole communities were formed around the appliance.

[Instagram was emerging at roughly the same time.  I kept calling it an Instapot.  I know for a fact that unintentional perversion of the appliance’s name grated on more than one person’s nerves, and she took every opportunity to correct me.]

My feed was soon almost entirely Instant Pot and Wordle brags.  (What happened to Wordle? I didn’t get into that either. I’m such a renegade.)

It was like a cult.

I stood back and tried to look interested and polite.  I was not interested. Not in the least.  I didn’t care that this incarnation of the pressure cooker could replace seven other needs: slow cooker, rice maker, Saturday night babysitter, warmer, yogurt maker, steamer, and bowling team sub. 

I still didn’t want an Instant Pot or Instapot. It was nothing but a gussied-up pressure cooker manufactured in an era marked by shoddy workmanship and planned obsolescence. 

I was afraid of the noisy monstrosity my dad used.  I didn’t even like cleaning the damn thing, it scared me so much. I’m told the Instant Pot is quiet.  That adds even more fear.  I could hear the demons in my father’s pressure cooker clattering for escape.

Terror accompanied by silence can be expressed mathematically as:

666 ( X3) ≠ 42

Silent terror destroys the ultimate meaning of life.

At every gift-giving opportunity at the zenith of its popularity, someone would get that gleam in their eye. I would say assertively, “I don’t want an Instant Pot.  I really don’t. I do appreciate the thought, but I will just return it.  Please. I’m busy, please don’t add to my to-do list.  I would prefer to receive nothing.”

So, of course, I was gifted an Instant Pot with no way to return it.  Four years ago now, I think.

It is still in the heavy brown box UPS uses for shipping.

I’m going to stack the 6-month-old unopened shipping box holding the air fryer on top of the Instant Pot box. 

I’m not afraid of the air fryer.  I might even use it someday.

[I hear tell the Ninja CREAMi is the next viral gadget all the cool kids will be clamoring about. I’m kind of interested in it, but at more than $200, it is not going to complete my trinity of unused, unopened viral kitchen toys anytime in the near future..]

Intense Contentment

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There’s a pot of potato soup at a slow simmer on the stove.  Everything about this day is slow.  Unhurried.  Leisurely.  Unfolding gently from the dark of predawn to the sunset at 5:07 pm. It is a day to burrow into all the comforts that make home home.  Pumpernickel bread is baking and the house is filled with the smell of caraway seed.  Irish butter was procured for the bread and mulled cider will round out the evening menu though Louisa is considering making gingerbread for dessert.  She nestles deeper into the chair as she considers the expenditure of energy that will take. 

Gingerbread would be good.  There is heavy cream to turn into whipped cream, but the kitchen is spotless, and she is not sure she wants to clean it again.  Louisa ponders.

Royce is napping upstairs.  She figures she has the house to herself for another hour.  He is a marathon sleeper.  No 20-minute power naps for him. He says anything less than two hours is not worth his time.

The house is silent except for the hum of the furnace and the purrs of the cat.

She has not had the television on at all this day and silenced her phone several hours ago. 

Louisa is hibernating in the peace she and Royce have built in their 30 years of marriage.  All the rough edges have smoothed.  They fit together like the two halves of the yin-yang. Both are strong personalities, but they have long worked out their friction points without giving up their identities.  They are not two shall become one,  but two that curve together in all the right places. 

It was a lot of work. These past six, seven years have been ones of ease and plenty.  Love and friendship.  Passion and camaraderie.  He still makes her laugh.  She still makes him think.

The forecast called for just flurries, but Louisa estimates there are two inches of flurries accumulated on the back deck.  There is no place she needs to be.  There is nothing she should be doing.  All that concerns her is whether she wants to make gingerbread or not.

She decides that the smell of gingerbread baking will heighten further this intense feeling of contentment.  The warmth of it will further keep at bay the bluster of the outside world.

Can contentment be intense?  Is that an oxymoron?

She whispers a small prayer:  May all beings know this feeling.  But she doesn’t dwell on it.  She does not want to consider the reality of the the all-too real world.

She wants this day to go on and on.

Pancakes or Waffles?

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Pancakes or waffles, you ask?  Well.  I’m actually a French toast kind of chick if I’m going to be that carb indulgent.  Normally, my breakfast of choice is potatoes, sausage, two eggs over easy, wheat toast well done and well buttered.  That’s my mainstay. 

But there are mornings—or evenings more likely—when a warm breakfast bread calls to me. 

Photo by nabil boukala on Unsplash

I once had a vintage waffle iron I bought at the Goodwill for $2.  I was excited to have it.  I brought it home, plugged it in to see if it worked and told my five-year-old son not to touch it.  What did he do?  He touched it.  Nearly 2nd degree burns on his little hand.  I learned real fast why it was at the Goodwill.  It was not safe.  The whole thing got hot.  Scorching hot.  2nd degree burns hot.  I did the world a favor and threw that sucker away.

I did eventually get a new waffle iron.  Hated it too.  By the time you got the waffles from the iron to the table, the butter wouldn’t melt, they were so cold.  And that is mostly my experience with waffles.  You can’t keep them hot.  And there is no point in a waffle or a pancake or even French Toast if it’s not hot and swimming in melted butter.  Lots of butter.  Real butter.  Good real butter.  Like a nice Danish butter from the Gucci Kroger cheese case. 

So, we went back to pancakes.  I like pancakes.  Tons of butter and sometimes, certainly not always, a bit of maple syrup.  Real maple syrup.  Not that fake stuff.  Ooooo ick.  No.  Never that.  Never.  But I seldom order them and even less often make them at home.  Just not big on the pancakes.

But the French toast, you might ask?  Well.  There’s a problem with French toast.  I like it one of two ways.  Made with that dirt cheap white bread you can buy at any Dollar General or French toast, Pan Perdue, made with my homemade bread.  The problem is I seldom have either when a French toast urge comes upon me.  So, it’s a once or twice a year thing unless I’m out somewhere, but they rather bug me the French toast purveyors do.  By the time they’re done with it, it’s a dessert.  Powdered sugar, fruit compote, whipped cream.  Now that can be good, as a dessert, but it’s not French toast. 

Here’s the recipe for French Toast:

Connie’s day old homemade white bread sliced about an inch and half thick.

6 eggs, beaten

Heavy cream

A dash of nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Good butter

Mix all the ingredients except the butter until you have a creamy thick liquid.  Soak the bread in it and pop the slices into a hot pan with melted butter.  Fry on both sides until puffed and golden brown.

Serve with copious amounts of butter and maple syrup if you must.  Savory sausage patties for contrast on the side. Perfection. 

But waffles or pancakes, you ask?  I hang out at the Waffle House.  In fact, I have a book started:  Meet Me at the Waffle House.  I have a couple of chapters written.  One morning, I wanted something different and noticed they offered waffles with pecans.  I have never turned down a pecan in my life.  Waffle House waffles with extra pecans and a load of whipped butter are the bomb. Love ‘em. I think it’s the pecans, but they hold the heat.  I can actually get a hot waffle.  Oooo doggies.  Good eating.

Yesterday, I took my Consort to the Waffle House.  He decided on a waffle along with eggs etc.  I told him to get it with extra pecans.  He’ll tell you.  Perfection.

So, the answer?  Waffles or pancakes?  Waffle House waffles (hot) with extra pecans at 5 a.m. with your hot lover and hot coffee.  Oooo doggies.

What made you start cooking? A guest blog by Jeremy Leinen aka Chef Boy ‘R Mine

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

I’m sure many chefs get asked the question all the time of how they found their way into the kitchen. There are a few of the usual stories that get shared but it’s not always the cookie-cutter story of helping mom or grandma.

For me, it’s half typical and half not. At a pretty young age, I was helping my mom make bread- I think I was six years old. It was the Betty Crocker Cookbook and I recall using a standard white bread. A side story is that this bread got an unlikely nickname as “the bread with the hole in the top.” To explain, my mom was apparently in a hurry one time she made it and didn’t form the dough firmly enough when placing it into the loaf pan, leaving a pocket of air where the dough was folded. This resulted in a hole in each slice of bread, and thus the name. Despite its technical shortfall, it was very tasty bread. In addition to that recipe, we also made a recipe from the book for a potato dough called “Refrigerator Roll Dough.” I still use this recipe from time to time, as I find it very easy to work with and it’s very forgiving with its overnight proof in the refrigerator. After a couple of years of helping her, by the time I was nine or ten, I made the bread myself for Thanksgiving. The following year, I was probably too ambitious for my own good and failed at attempting to make croissants. There were tears and some butter angrily thrown into the trash can when I couldn’t get it to cooperate, but making bread with Mom is otherwise one of my fonder childhood memories. I also helped Mom with making pies, which were sometimes simple with store-bought pie shells, but not always- Mom got pretty serious about pie sometimes. She also made a yearly batch of what she referred to as “killer chili,” which is based around a more traditional “Chile con Carne” and not this ground beef and beans nonsense that gets sold in a can. Mom made chili that took a couple of days and $100, and that’s when $100 was actually worth something.

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