{{{Laura & family}}}

Laura, my sympathies to you and Brandon.

A new gadget won't make you start cooking if you are not already doing it.

Wise advice. I do love new gadgets though.

Remind me are you on a restricted diet?

Nope.

Zen, if you are low carbing it I can send you the month plan with recipes that I sent to Sophia. If you are doing carbs then just have real rice where it calls for cauliflower rice and so forth.

I would be happy to get this! I'm doing carbs. I've learned there's no point in me doing lowER carbs; either I eat bread/sugar or I don't.

Meal planning is absolutely impossible for me. Maybe I'll get better at things that require, idk, *planning*, but for now, I need to be able to feed myself whenever I remember to wander into the kitchen. I've been eating a lot of fruit and PB&J sandwiches, and instant oatmeal and microwaveable Rice-A-Roni.

I would recommend InstantPot for: 1)People who want a rice cooker, but don't want a uni-tasker 2)People who eat a lot of yogurt 3)People who have foods they would make more often if it didn't take so dang long.

Maybe that's me. 1) I'd probably eat more rice if cooking rice was easy. 2) I love yogurt and being able to make it myself would be cheaper than buying 20 little pots of yogurt a week. 3) Half of my reluctance to cook is how long it takes. My attention span is shorter right now than it has ever been in my life. And my impulse control is not working at 100% either. I'm using you guys as a safeguard on buying an expensive new gadget I may not need.

I woke up this morning, fed the cats, ate some breakfast, decided to go back to bed for a bit and slept until 3 pm. Oops.

I did the same thing! Except 5pm. Woke up to a friend pounding on my door. I missed a movie date, which never happens, and she was halfway afraid I was dead. She's a good friend.

The Instant Pot has almost certainly saved us its price in takeout at this point.

Laura, I'm sorryfor your loss.

Oh man you guys. Now I have to buy an Instant Pot for sure. Mmmm, gadgets.

oatmeal with apple and cinnamon:

And I just bought the IP! It only cost me $4 because I applied cash back points from my Amazon credit card. I try and use that card bunches so I have the points sitting there for impulse buys.

Whee! New recipes and gadgets!

If you have pizza dough on hand, it takes less than a half hour (half to heat up the oven to 400F) to make your own customized personal pizza. Faster than most deliveries, and tastier than frozen.

For folks who want Instant Pots but can wait - the 6-qt Duo model has gone on sale for $59 on Prime Day for the past two years.

I haven't used my crock pot at all since I got mine last summer. It does everything the crock pot did, but better because it can be programmed more precisely. (Chicken in the crock pot was always a problem because it was basically impossible to not overcook it. If you have a fancier crock pot with better program/timer settings this may not be an issue.)

Indian food is probably the biggest selling point - every single recipe in Maddhur Jaffrey's "Quick and Easy Indian Cooking" requires a pressure cooker. And this butter chicken recipe is just about the most delicious thing ever.

Last night we saw 2Cellos in concert at Radio City Music Hall - they're a rock cello duo from Croatia, and they are AMAZING. D plays cello in the school orchestra and one of his friends introduced him to their YouTube channel, so we got tickets for the whole family + D's friend.

Today is all about house-cleaning even though officially it's National No Housework Day. But we have guests coming next weekend, so it must be done.

Homemade pizza - this is the easiest pizza dough. You don't have to be nearly as finicky with the measurements as Serious Eats says you should, and it pretty much makes itself.

I'd use my InstaPot more if I could find a lot of low-carb recipes that don't involve tomato. Mr. Loomy is allergic to nightshades. But I am going to try making yogurt, and I just found a recipe for clotted cream (!!!).