Mid Winter Musings

It’s a cold February evening as I key this post.  I’m sitting in one of the Sunday school rooms at a church miles away from home because my traveling partner is at a board meeting and we had to use my car to get here.  It’s a little chilly here in the room but I’m not complaining because it’s MUCH colder outside though not nearly as bad as it was last month at this time when we were in a DEEP freeze for days and nights on end with temperatures in the single digits and wind chills many more degrees colder.  But, as I often remind myself when somebody else isn’t reminding me, everything is relative.  Winter is now officially half over.  The days are getting longer, and in a few weeks with the return of Daylight Saving Time they’ll be longer still.  It’s all a function of where we are and how far we can see from whatever hill on which we happen to be sitting atop.  In other words, from where I’m sitting, things are looking up despite this view of the scooter from this morning…

Housebound, I’ve been doing a lot of eating.  Well, cooking, and then eating.  While a breakfast bagel isn’t an example of anything I’ve made, it’s a very good example of something I bought on impulse a few weeks ago and dispatched not long after when I got back home.

No, the real cooking has been with an Instant Pot received as a Christmas present.  Meals unlike any I’ve made at home are as easy to make as…  I was going to say, “As easy as pie,” but pies aren’t particularly easy to make in my estimation.  Anyway, an Instant Pot is a combination cooker that does a number of different things, but the stellar feature is that it’s a pressure cooker, something I’d never used before.

 

Beef and Broccoli every bit as good as from any Chinese restaurant!

  Now I imagine the meals I’ve been making with it lately might be just as good if they were to be made in a slow cooker, but the advantage here is speed and savings of time.  MAJOR savings of time!   Fall off the bone and melt in your mouth spare ribs in 15 minutes.  Rice as a midnight snack in ten minutes.  Mongolian chicken in 12 minutes.  The thing is remarkable and the meals are equally impressive.  The best so far?  Chili that rivals my favorite - Wendy's!

 

Chili as good as Wendy's and I should know because I eat a LOT of Wendy's chili.

Okay, I'll admit that this pork loin came out looking more like an unmentionable part of an elephant that isn't usually eaten unless by one of the big cats on the plains of Africa.

And when I’m not scootering, cooking, or eating, you just might find me sampling some new craft beers somewhere.  I had to laugh yesterday when my sister told me that our favorite uncle won a basket of beer at the church Valentine’s dance on Friday evening and gave it away because he doesn’t like craft beers and only drinks Genesee.  To each his own.  I can’t judge.  As I read somewhere long ago, I don’t know what’s Art, but I know what I like.  Scootering.  Good food.  Beer.   Not necessarily in that order.