Insinkeration

The holiday weekend detector in the InSinkErator® disposal unit triggered, and as I went to rinse some dishes on Friday I found myself standing in water. I’ve done a little light home plumbing here and there — replaced a shower head, fixed a toilet — but with a long weekend imminent, this was clearly a job for a professional. Clarke Kent Plumbing were able to visit inside an hour — presumably what with journalism being on the decline, the Daily Planet just don’t keep him busy any more.

Thanks to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I recently became aware that garbage disposals were illegal in New York until 1997. Presumably the tradition there is just to toss your food scraps into a bin to have giant rats deal with it, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the rat community wasn’t behind the original ban.

Elsewhere in the kitchen, the Instant Pot seems to be working out. It’s getting us to cook a couple of times a week and eat leftovers on other days. My most recent adventure was a Thai green curry with chickpeas, spinach, and some carrots I had left behind from a previous recipe. It was pretty delicious and I’ve got another three servings stored away. It turns out that the main draw of the Instant Pot isn’t the speed — sure, it can cook some things impressively quickly, but the name is a bit misleading as you’ll generally still be taking 20 minutes to half an hour to cook something. The bonus, though, is convenience. You can saute and steam things in the pot, and then when everything is ready put it all in together to pressure cook and finish off. Other than saute, pretty much everything is automatic. For example, I can dump in the right amount of steel-cut oats and water, push a few buttons, and go do some work. When I hear the beep I’ll have perfect oatmeal. I think I might give up buying instant oatmeal, in fact.