My latest favorite gadget
Do you enjoy cooking? I come from a family of excellent cooks on my mom’s side with my grandmother and great aunts renowned for their baking skills. My mom and her sister inherited those skills with Mom’s pie crust still being the best I’ve ever tasted (flaky but not dry) and my aunt’s cinnamon rolls so delicious they make your mouth water.
I have been known to make a mean pie crust every once in a while and find baking very fun. The problem is, I don’t do it much because I end up eating every single thing I bake and that’s not good for my diet!
When it comes to cooking anything other than baked goods, I really could not care less. I cook because I have to eat. I love food but not cooking it. I even have a little decoration in my kitchen that says, “My favorite thing to make for dinner is reservations.” After working long hours and (for nearly 15 years) spending sometimes up to an hour in traffic driving each way to and from work, the last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner when I got home.
When I was single, it was even worse because I only had to cook whatever I wanted (or nothing at all). Lucky for me that the man I married loves to cook and is very good at it. He’s not one for baking, but he’ll whip up a mean meat sauce or grill some savory steaks and baked potatoes.
Now that I’m retired, I have found that I’m starting to enjoy cooking much more than ever. After all, what else do I have to do? I could say the same thing about cleaning my house, but who enjoys that?
One thing that I always find fun about cooking is trying new kitchen gadgets. Whether it’s an avocado masher, a new blender setting or a fancy corkscrew, I find gadgets fascinating. So, it comes as no surprise that our little air fryer is my favorite new gadget. We had a larger one with three metal grate shelves that worked great but left us with burnt-on pieces of food to try and scrub out of the grates. Too much work! Now, we traded it for a nifty, smaller version with a bucket that holds the food. I love it.
My real question is how does it magically work differently than a microwave? It heats up and circulates air to perfectly crisp up anything I throw in there after around 10 to 15 minutes. The result is so much better than soggy microwave fare, and I’m enjoying trying new recipes every week without adding extra heat to the kitchen this summer.
Next up when it cools off this fall: the crockpot. That holds all sorts of possibilities.
At this rate, I may even try to use our food processor for the first time!
Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.