Trying Pot

I wrote the other day about how pot is now legal, recreationally, in California (medicinal marijuana has been legal for several years).

I decided it was finally time for me to try pot.  A special kind of pot.

I've been seeing ads for the Instapot and reading glowing reviews about it and thinking about buying one after Christmas with some of the money I had to withdraw from my IRA account.

I finally bit the bullet and clicked on the purchase button.  That's when I learned that if I finally signed up for the Amazon credit card which they have been bugging me about for years,  would get an instant gift certificate which would bring the cost of my Instapot to $9.  Heck, that was an offer I definitely couldn't refuse!

It was delivered today and I attempted to familiarize myself with the very lengthy introduction to my new gadget.  I decided to do a test run on it, as instructed in the book.

First, I had to find a spot for it on my already cluttered counter.  It's too tall to fit into any of the cupboards and I figured I would use it frequently anyway so it deserved a space front and center, right next to the Cuisinart.

This replaces a number of electronic gadgets, so I was able to clear room by moving 2 crock pots and a rice cooker into a pile to be donated to the SPCA.

Got the pot set up, plugged in, and filled with 3 cups of water.  Then, with the instructions at hand, I set it to "cook" for 2 minutes.  (I learned that it takes a long time to warm up before it starts "cooking."  When I opened the pot, there was my nicely boiled water (see?  I can boil water!), which I emptied and then put the lid back on the pot.  Only I couldn't get it to lock.  And in fact, it locked in one spot but nowhere else.  I could neither open nor shut it.

I was getting increasingly frustrated and since my way of "fixing" things is to kick them, I decided it would be better if I asked engineer Walt to look at it.  He, too, was frustrated until he examined it more closely and discovered where I went wrong, and voila!  No more problem.  Now I know how to open and close the pot.  This was a great step forward.

We had a show to review (Something's Rotten, one of the funniest shows I've seen since Book of Mormon) so I couldn't do anything more with the pot, but I fear that trying to figure out what I was going to cook first kept me awake until the wee small hours of the morning.  I wanted to make lemon-orange marmalade, since I have all the ingredients except enough sugar, so that required a trip to the store.  However, since I just bought some steel cut oats and still have a couple of Apple Hill apples in the fridge, apple-cinnamon oatmeal seemed like a good place to start.

But I wasn't going to make oatmeal at 4 a.m., which is why I was sitting up watching YouTube videos on Instapots.  It finally got sorta light and I was hungry, so I made the oatmeal.  Oh my was it delicious!

Around lunch time, I decided to try hard boiled eggs, since everyone raves about how easy and un-screw-up-able they were.  I stuck two eggs in the pot and then went away and came back about 15 minutes later (3 minutes to cook, 10 minutes to release the pressure, 2 minutes of forgetting to check them) and the eggs were perfect. peeled flawlessly and were great, for hard boiled eggs.

My third recipe was the one I most wanted to make -- lemon/orange marmalade.  I had Meyer lemons from Ned and lots of oranges.  I had to buy sugar because the recipe called for three pounds.  I used my wonderful mandolin to cut each of the citrus into 1/8" slices and got it all in the pot.  Then I screwed it up by using the wrong settings and in trying to "fix" it, I ended up with a burned mess on my hands.  I continued on and finished the process, but the end result was a watery, darker than it should be pot of stuff.  I put it in jars, as directed and when it cooled, I had the consistency of black tar -- stiff, sticky and unable to be "spread" on anything.  I was so disappointed.

Plus I was just sick because my sparkling, shiny new pot was thickly stuck with black goo.  However, Walt is my hero.  It took him two days of working on it, but he restored it to like new.

Then  got the idea of taking spoonfuls of marmalade and thinning it with hot water and it worked beautifully and, wonder of wonder, it tasted good.  Too sweet for me and if I ever do this again, I'll cut the sugar, but it's definitely enjoyable.

Now I'm trying to figure out what I can make today, but since I have caught the creeping crud I really don't feel like doing anything, and I may just sit and find Instapot blogs and watch Instapot videos.

So my father was right all those years ago when he warned me about drugs and their addictive properties.  I only tried "pot" once and already I'm hooked.  I'm a pothead.