Instapot Review - Thank You Canada

Among Rat's accessories is an Indian pressure cooker. I loathe it. Among it's many offenses it doesn't even whistle, so I have no idea when food is actually done; this has resulted in such sad recipes as Bisi Beli Burnt. It hisses and spits at me and likes to ooze foamy goo onto the stove top burners.  And I'm always afraid it's going to blow up in my face. If Rat did not love using it so much, I would throw it out. 

So when our new Instapot electric pressure cooker arrived, I set it up to cook some, rice all the while keeping my distances and eyeing it suspiciously. But it had none of the behavioral issues of the Indian pressure cooker. It was silent excep when it made a pleasant little chime to let me know the rice was done. Since I could set a timer, I didn't have to wonder when the rice was done or worry about it burning. And Instapot didn't squirt out messy goo from its valve.

The Instapot is a nifty gadget from Canada.  It is one machine with many functions: it is a rice cooker, a pressure cooker, a slow cooker, a yogurt maker, and less impressively a sautér, steamer, and warmer. As a bonus the cooking pot is not made with poisonous non-stick coating, it is stainless steel. I have been lusting after the Instapot for three years now. They are a bit pricey and I could never justify the cost while we still had a working rice cooker, but our Proctor Silex Rice Cooker passed away a few weeks ago, after serving us well for three solid years, so it was time to buy a new kitchen toy, and it is awesome!

I never ate rice too often before I met the Rat.  In fact, I used to make *shudders* boil-in-the-bag Minute rice. I know, I know, all I can say in my defense is no one taught me how to cook. However, since meeting the Rat my Indian food - and therefore rice - consumption has increased to the point where a rice cooker is a necessary kitchen appliance.  I have gone through several of them, each leaving behind a plastic rice paddle and soup spoon as their grave markers. My favorites have been ones like the Proctor Silex, where the rice bowl and lid are removeable and dishwasher safe. Why you would make a rice cooker without a removable lid or rice bowl is beyond my comprehension, but there are many out there.

Rat brought home one such abomination when one of our rice cookers died. I loathed the thing. The lid was permanently hinged on and someone (I'm not saying it was the Rat, I'm just saying it wasn't me) would always close it up with rice still in there and the next time I went to make rice (usually a couple days later) I be greeted by a pink putrid blob when I opened the rice cooker lid.

The Instapot performs the main job that I bought it for exemplary. It makes awesome rice. So far I have tried basmati and jasmine. The rice comes out tasting and looking like the rice you get at restaurants. With all our other rice cookers (or using the stove top method) our homemade rice has always been a bit mushier than restaurant rice. Also we always end up with a layer of dried out rice stuck to the bottom of the pot. With the Instantpot, as long as I put a light coating of butter or oil on the bottom, the rice does not stick to the bottom of the pot. It is so nice not to end up wasting a quarter cup of rice every time I make it.

As a pressure cooker, I have been quite happy. Although it doesn't always reduce recipe time, it allows for passive cooking: no need to keep stirring every few minutes, no worries about something burning, nothing boiling over onto the stove top and making a mess. I infact, prefer to use the Instapot over our crappy apartment electric stovetop for most cooking tasks.

Besides rice, I have made cheesy grits, fennel egg curry, steel cut oats, and the easiest to peel hard boiled eggs. Seriously, pressure cooking your eggs is the way to go; it creates a pocket between the egg white and the shell while cooking, so when you go to peel them the shell practically falls right off ( no more ugly pock-marked eggs). Recently, I tried the yogurt making function with some regular thermophilic yogurt, and it set quite nicely in eight hours.

I am loving the many benefits of cooking with the Instapot, especially now that the temperatures are in the 80s and 90s, it keeps the kitchen nice and cool. Basically, it's like a slow cooker on crack. I can dump things in and not worry about them burning, and best of all I don't have to wait 6 to 8 hours for the food to be done.

Dirty Laundry - How to Wash Cloth Diapers

One of the biggest concerns of people when considering cloth diapering is how to clean them. If you don't have to consider cleaning them they are just as easy as using disposables. Since many of us were diapered using disposables, we haven't had the generational wisdom passed down to us on how to launder diapers, and are pretty clueless.

The good news is if you are exclusively breastfeeding you don't have to worry about doing anything with the poo. You just throw the soiled diaper in your wet bag and wash it because breast fed poo is water soluble.

The bad news is once you start on solids or if you are formula feeding you need to shake off the poo into the toilet before watching. Using flush-able diaper liners or a diaper sprayer can be helpful with this. I have heard of some people having a designated "poop spatula", but this method is not for me.

Since college I knew that I wanted to cloth diaper. But it remained a nebulous idea, until I became pregnant; then I realized if I was actually going to cloth diaper I was going to have to do some research and educate myself on it. I spent a lot of time researching cloth diapers, and consider myself an expert on the topic now, not just because of research, but because now one year into raising a cloth diapered baby, I have experimented a lot and learned what works and what doesn't.

One option you can keep in mind is having a diaper service, they will pick up your soiled diapers and drop off cleaned diapers. Personally, I could never get on the used diaper bandwagon - it just grosses me out putting something on my daughter that other babies have pooed and peed in.

If you can't afford or don't want to use a diaper service there are certain steps you can add to your washining routine to sanitize your diapers. Though I had read up on other peoples diaper washing routines and had decided that cold water rinse, hot water wash, cold water rinse, dry in the dryer was the way to go, I noticed after we started solids that the diapers would stink when I was drying them in the dryer, a nasty fishy smell. Some sites said that if this is happening then it is probably a problem with the detergent, either you are using too much and the detergent is not being fully rinsed out or you are using to little and it is not enough detergent to fully clean the diapers. At the time I was using Rockin Green Classic Rock (yes I had done a water hardness strip test to select the appropriate formula for my water). In desperation, I  switched detergents to Charlies.  This improved the situation a little, but the diapers were still smelling.

So if you are suffering with stinky diapers, here are a few things which have worked for me:

Vinegar
Use vinegar in the final rinse (warning you want to remove any PUL covers or AIO diapers with PUL). You could also use bleach, but it is hard on fabric and will decrease the lifespan of your diapers.

Sun
Sun your diapers. The ultraviolet light from the sun kills germs. Also diapers take a really long time to dry in the dryer; you could cut down on your electricity bill by sunning them. I like to do this every few washes to sanitize mine.  The sun also helps remove some of the poo stains; it is especially effective with EBF poo.

Hot water
If you have control over your water heater you could also increase it so that the hot water gets to 140-150 degrees (the temperature required to kill germs). Although, this route could be dangerous when you are bathing the lil one. Heating some hot water in an electrical kettle and adding it to the washing machine is another option.

In case you are interested in my diaper laundry routine here it is:

1. Do a cold water rinse to get rid of any poo or pee that was not rinsed off. 
2. Hot water wash with two tablespoons of Charlie's laundry detergent.
3. Remove the PUL diaper covers at this point (vinegar breaks down their absorbency so I just line dry them)
4. Run a final rinse adding between 1/2 to 1 cup vinegar (depending on load size) to the rinse water and let it soak at least one hour and sometimes overnight.
5. Hang outside on clothesline in the sun to dry.
6. Finish up with 10-15 minutes in the dryer to soften the diapers up.

Sometimes I skip step 5 if I am in a hurry to dry my diapers and sometimes I am lazy and skip step 6 and just deal with diapers that are a little stiff. 

Water Kefir Grains are Reproducing!

Well, it has almost been 6 weeks exactly, and now my water kefir grains have started to grow!

I started out with 3 tablespoons and now I am up to 4; a modest increase, but at least they are increasing. I am hoping to have an extra 3 to 4 tablespoons to take with me to share with family when I visit Michigan. I had read that sometimes kefir grains take 6-8 weeks before they start reproducing. Seems to be true.

I have been constantly making kefir since I received my grains. I feed them 4 tablespoons of sugar and culture them in a quart mason jar for two days, then I strain out the grains and start the process over. The strained liquid I mix with some juice or tea ( so far I have tried cherry, grapefruit, cranberry, Concord grape and hibiscus tea) and culture for another two days on the counter top and then move it to the refrigerator if I haven't drank it all by that time. I have also started adding either a teaspoon of molasses or a pinch of pink Himalayan salt for minerals.  

I notice that non-concentrate juices seem to get more fizzy. Also I have noticed some decrease in my appetite since I started drinking kefir.

Since it has been getting hotter here (90s), I am starting to move from two days of culturing to one.  This will also give me a buffer if I forget about  my grains for a day. On a couple occasions now, I have forgot and let the grains go three days in between their feedings. I was scared that I might kill them, but they seem to be doing fine.  I hope they keep on reproducing. I will be happier once I have some back up grains stored away just in case something goes wrong.