Instant Love

When my parents retired, my mom put her foot down. You see, they moved further south. Dad's job brought our family to North Carolina. His love to tax relief, mountains, and lakes landed the retirees in South Carolina. 

Further south meant longer, warmer summers and fewer cool evenings. To my dad, that meant less oven use. The oven heated the house, which in turn made it harder to keep cool. Dad was able to keep a house cool—in the South—without using air conditioning.

Less oven use to a first-gen Sicilian was unacceptable. The compromise was an outdoor oven. Not a built-in brick oven for upscale outdoor living. An actual oven. 

Our first attempt at instant pot
baked penne. Perfect!

Dad installed it on their covered deck. When she wanted to make a pan of lasagna or bake a batch of biscotti, she had to do it outside nine months of the year. They used that little oven regularly, except on Friday. Dad grilled the Friday-night homemade pizzas on the grill he'd kept workable for 30 years. 

I tell you this to illustrate how much we all, as a society, needed the Instant Pot. 

They are all the rage now. We thought we were something when we waited out the initial craze and got ours at the discounted price of $99. The same model is on sale this week for less than $80 according to an ad I heard while jamming to '80s music on the way to work. 

Everyone—the sales lady, a close friend, my aunt, my sister, random online trolls—said we had to make hard boiled eggs first. After the box sat in the kitchen collecting dust and providing a place for our cat Freya to nap, Hubby finally broke down, unpacked it, and made six eggs. 

I scoffed. I could do twice as many in the same amount of time. The Instant Pot device has to 'get to pressure' and then cook and then the steam has to be released just so before the eggs are transferred to an ice bath. And my eggs are just as easily peel-able as the Instant Pot eggs. 

Then we were discussing what we wanted for supper one night. We had all the fixings for baked penne. However, it was 95 degrees outside. I was not going to heat up the kitchen by ramping up the stove to 375 degrees and make our air conditioning work harder. I did NOT inherit Dad's ability to manually cool a house.

Then I remembered. We had an Instant Pot. Then I remembered more. I didn't know how to use it. So I did what any working woman in the 2010s would do. I shared a Pinterest recipe for Instant Pot baked penne to Hubby's phone. 

From start to finish, it took 25 minutes for him to make the baked penne. It was al dente. It was delicious. It didn't have any hard, crusty pieces. It. Was. Perfect!

That was the moment I fell in love with our Instant Pot. I might've also fallen in love with Hubby all over again.

I wish my dad could have lived to see it. I wish my mom was still able to cook and could experience it. I'm so appreciative of this technology. And of Hubby!

Michele "Micki" Bare, mother of three, wife, daughter & marketing director, is the author of Thurston T. Turtle children's chapter books. 
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