On the Instant Pot Bandwagon

I forget how I learned about the Instant Pot.  I suppose I saw an ad somewhere. I did a lot of reading online (checking out reviews, videos, and competing products). I was excited by the thought of a multifunctional device (it can make yogurt!  it can hardboil eggs!), by the promise of dry beans cooked quickly without soaking, and by the option of sous vide (available with the Ultra model that I decided to purchase) (even though I still haven't attempted it).

I've owned the Instant Pot for around 15 months, and it has become one of the most heavily used appliances in my kitchen.  I don't use it daily, but there are few weeks that it doesn't get set on the counter and plugged in.

The most frequent use, which I had not anticipated, is the preparation of vegetable broth.  I save vegetable scraps in the freezer and whenever I run out of fresh vegetable broth I throw the scraps into the Instant Pot with some herbs and spices and three quarts of water. Set some dials and push a button, and forget about it.  Whenever I get back to it, there's at least three quarts of broth, ready for use in soups and other recipes.  Cleanup is easy, but my favorite part is that the pot doesn't have to be watched.  I can go out and do errands; the Instant Pot finishes cooking and then keeps the contents safely warm until I get back.

The next most frequent use is for beans. We eat mostly vegetarian at home, which means beans are a significant part of our diet.  They turn out well in the Instant Pot, though I still try to soak beforehand if possible, because everybody says this helps the beans cook more evenly.  Even without soaking, though, you can get a good result.

The third most frequent use is for soups and stews.  The Instant Pot has a saute feature, so you can saute aromatics and other ingredients before the pressure cooking step if needed (it's not necessarily dump and cook).  But once that's done, I love locking the top and pushing the button and not having to futz. You can give your attention to other parts of the meal, or just take a rest. 

Finally, I've found the Instant Pot is a great partner for Indian food. Maybe the Instant Pot presses the spices into the food with more force? I don't know, but the Indian food I've made in the Instant Pot (saag, chickpea masala) turns out especially tasty. I've used recipes from the Internet as well as Urvashi Pitre's Indian Instant Pot Cookbook.

One really helpful resource for vegetarian cooking with the Instant Pot has been Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen. This was written before the Instant Pot craze, but Sass has been a pressure cooker proponent for many years.  Most of her recipes include instructions for both pressure cooker and conventional equipment.  I have found the recipes pretty reliable and tasty.

The Instant Pot has turned out to be one of my favorite purchases for the kitchen.

A Small Irritation

I totally get that stores sometimes discontinue items to the inconvenience of past purchasers. You can't expect a store to carry an item forever, just because you might break or lose yours. For example, when we found wine glasses we liked at Crate&Barrel some years ago, we bought several extra, knowing they would likely be discontinued before long (and they were). So it is hardly surprising that Pottery Barn no longer carries the flatware we purchased around 1997. What annoys me is that Pottery Barn now carries a flatware set with the same name as ours, but which looks nothing like it.

So that I was forced to wonder if I had misremembered the name of our flatware. Through the magic of Google, however, I was reassured that my memory is fine: Pottery Barn has simply made a choice that I cannot understand at all. Why would Pottery Barn want to confuse its own customers? Why would Pottery Barn apply a Danish name (Tivoli) to a ridged and rather fussy flatware design entirely unreminiscent of Danish design?

To bug me, obviously. File under first-world problems.

(Very very very very very small first-world problems.)

Comparison Shopping: Extended Warranty Programs

I used the American Express extended warranty program for the first time when our milk frother (how yuppie are we?) stopped working a couple months after its warranty expired. I called the service number, provided the name of the product, described the problem, gave the date of purchase, cost, length of original warranty, the total amount on the receipt, and within 48 hours the purchase price had been refunded to our account.

Couldn't have been simpler.  Previously I'd been a credit card agnostic, but this experience made me an AMEX convert.  My husband and I resolved to use our AMEX card for most of our purchases--especially for stuff that might break--and we bragged about AMEX's great customer service to anybody who would listen (we had a similarly good experience with AMEX's auto CDW coverage a few months later).

Recently my iPhone's battery case (a Mophie Juicepack Air) stopped working properly.  I checked to see when it had been purchased and found the warranty expired in September.  So I called American Express and gave them the required information: product name, problem, purchase date, warranty length, purchase price, total amount on receipt....  DARN!  While I was on the phone with the representative I saw that the purchase had been made with our Visa card, not our AMEX.  So I apologized to the rep and hung up.

Then called Visa.  Which offers a similar program.  But not the same.  Because after providing Visa's representative with similar information to that which I'd provided AMEX, she emailed me a FORM (from the sender "Enhancement Services"--do they WANT you to delete their email as spam?). In addition to signing the form, I have to provide the original receipt, the Visa statement containing that charge, and a receipt for the replacement product.

The form and accompanying documentation can be faxed or mailed.

So I have a couple of issues with this.  First, I was able to execute a claim solely on the phone with AMEX; why does Visa require a form?  Second, why does Visa need me to give them a receipt and a statement--this "proof of purchase" requirement would take a person in their office a moment (querying with our account number and the purchase date that I provided). Instead I have to hunt around and print things; presumably this would be even more trouble for less organized people. Visa recommends that you avoid this trouble by registering everything you buy with its Warranty Manager service, but that seems unnecessarily onerous.  Again, since you bought the product with your Visa card, Visa HAS this information already.  And then, why on earth don't they let you submit the documentation electronically?

Conclusion: even when credit cards seem to provide the same service, they really don't. Which you probably already knew, but I didn't (I suspected it).  The documentation will be mailed to Visa today; I'll update this post when it's been resolved one way or another.

Update (12 August 2015): Well, I guess I forgot to update. We did get compensated by Visa, about a month later, by check.  All in all, a much clunkier process.

Architectural Artifacts

Victor and I had the opportunity to check this store out a couple of weeks ago and found a multi-story warehouse full of salvaged furniture, fixtures, and architectural remnants.

At Architectural Artifacts, you can purchase stained glass windows, dental cabinets, ice cream parlor benches, and opera house chandeliers. There is an abundance of hundred-year-old foosball tables, a smattering of stone statues (religious as well as secular), towers of old tiles. It's like a wonderfully eclectic museum, but you're permitted to touch.

We visited on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and found browsing there a perfect rainy-day activity. We look forward to bringing out-of-town guests there; somehow, though it's tucked away in Ravenswood, the store exudes a wonderfully urban atmosphere and energy--sophisticated, quirky, and downright strange.

Light Lesson

One thing I’ve learned this year is not to buy my lighting at lighting stores. Lighting stores are for browsing. They are way too expensive to buy from, and the selection is often limited. It may seem scary to buy such significant household items sight unseen (except for a thumbnail photo), but the price difference is such that even with hefty restocking charges for returns, it’s worth buying online.

I’ve mentioned Lamps Plus before; most recently we made a purchase from Affordable Lamps.com: this chandelier, which we are even happier with than we expected.

Filed in: Home, Shopping

Puffin Love

If you're like me, you love puffins. You know, those big-billed, clownish birds, the penguins of the North. In the summer of 2000, Victor and I spent a week on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia--a destination selected solely for its proximity to puffins. We did get to see some puffins, though not as close up as I would have liked (for that, I had to move to Chicago and visit the Lincoln Park Zoo, which--in a dark and rather stinky building--displays Atlantic Puffins, Tufted Puffins, and several relatives, including Common Murres and Razorbills).

We came home with some wonderful souvenirs: a coffee mug decorated with iconic puffin images, a tee shirt with an embroidered puffin, and a magnetic memo pad (suitable for grocery lists) with a puffin photograph on every page. Over the years, though, the puffins on the coffee mug succumbed to too much rough treatment by the dishwasher, the tee shirt faded and shrank, and the memo pad ran out of pages.

So I've been in the market for puffin stuff. In the past several months, I've occasionally cruised the Web for sources, with no luck. Recently, though, I came across a site that's actually called Puffin Stuff. While I didn't find mugs or tee shirts to catch my fancy, I did find some magnetic memo pads featuring a nice photo of two splendid specimens on top, and a pale watermarked image of a single puffin below. (Imagine my joy!)

They arrived just yesterday and they're perfect, except...

The pad says "Maine" on top. Which I didn't notice when I examined the product online. (Probably didn't fully magnify the image, in my excitement at finding a pristine puffin photo instead of an icky-cutesy drawing.) I've been to Maine several times, but mainly to Portland. I've never seen puffins there.

To rectify this, I guess we'll need to plan a puffin-seeking Maine getaway.

Now, if I can only get Victor to agree with my impeccable logic...

Filed in: Nature Shopping Travel