2022 - Tonight's recipe

Liver & bacon with mash & cabbage.

B. Yogurt, granola (10p) and a chopped apple.
Tangerine
L. Pumpkin, carrot & ginger soup.
A free cake or two
D. Leftover pasta mushrooms and sardines with additional sea food sticks.
Probably another cake to come later.

Total cost - 10p

B. Sourdough toast and plum jam
L. French bread loaf with seafood sticks and rocket & lettuce from the GH
D. Frozen Cod and chips with homemade mushy peas.

FREE day.

Ham, cauli cheese, tomatoes and sweet potato

Not a lot today. Bacon sarnie in morning and leftover buffet at my Sons's house.

The usual chilli & rice. Followed by meringue

I recently bought an Instant Pot (with an air fryer function) and finally got my hands on it yesterday afternoon. I've wanted one for ages and there was a good Black Friday deal (actually the cheapest ever price, unlike lots of the non-deals out there) so I went for it.

I think it's going to take quite a bit of experimenting to really get the hang of, but this afternoon I roasted a quarter of my Galeaux D'Eysines squash (peeled and cubed) and it came out great. It should have cost a fraction of the energy to do the same in an oven (not that I have an oven at the moment!) so I'm hoping it will pay for itself over the coming year. I've also used it to pressure cook some beans, but I'm a pressure cooking novice and rather overcooked them so that needs more experimenting!

Drawbacks so far: it is a bigger bit of kit than I expected. Not a million miles off the size of a Henry Hoover, so a rather chunky piece to sit on a kitchen worktop if you don't have a huge kitchen (mine is tiny). It also kicks out quite a lot of steam. I've had to put mine in my living room (turns out I should have tested whether the kitchen socket I was going to use for it worked before I bought it!) and 35 minutes of squash roasting has completely steamed up my windows and door panels. I've had a window open for about six hours but it's not helped a great deal. If using daily/more than once a day in winter, it could be an issue. Especially if you are a stingy Northerner like me who is refusing to put the heating on as long as I can manage wearing six jumpers at once! Finally, the instructions it comes with aren't great and it doesn't come with any recipes at all. There are some on its website, but the majority are for a standard Instant Pot rather than one with the air fryer lid as well. It would have been nice to follow a few basic recipes first, and then moved onto experimenting, rather than feeling thrown in at the deep-end from the get go.

We used to have a deep fryer that kicked out a lot of steam and fatty smells so we used it outside on a garden table. Is that an option for you Pros?

No, sadly not, especially at this time of year! Hopefully I will be able to get a new kitchen sorted in the next few months and then it can move in there.

One benefit of having it in the living room is that any heat it kicks out doesn't go to waste!

I'm cooking a reduced veggie lasagne in it currently (orange-stickered from Lidl). Seems to be producing a lot less steam than my squash. And pressure cooking beans yesterday didn't produce much steam as I let the pressure release naturally so it recondensed into the pot.

You'll soon get the hang of it. I don't have an oven either - I use a halogen oven - they're cheap to buy and more economical than an oven as there's not heating up time.