instant pot ⁽¹⁷⁾

Happy Neurodiversity Celebration Week!

There are many types of #neurodiversity and #ADHD is just one of them. A lot of times, an Instant Pot is a godsend for the easily distracted, whether that be adult caregivers to children who have the urge to draw a masterpiece all over the living room in lipstick, or a person whose brain is the challenge. Which is why so many of my recipes are written for people with executive dysfunction and low working memory, and cover meals that would be faster and, some might find, easier to prepare without the Instant Pot. And today is no exception.

Today, I present: enhanced boxed macaroni and cheese. It is a mashup of my fancy dinner macaroni and cheese frugalized with the boxed macaroni and cheese recipe found elsewhere on this website.

I have an earlier version of this recipe kicking around and wanted to update now that I've got executive dysfunction AND a toddler. That's double not able to attend to my cooking, so I shifted things around and made this more of a dump-and-go recipe.

Mujadara is a vegan, middle-eastern dish of spiced lentils. It's name means "pockmarked" which is in reference to the rice looking pockmarked by the lentils. The spice profile used here is lebanese because yum. In the Notes section, I'll offer other sources of other spice profiles from other countries and cultures.

Once, many years ago, I heard a rumor that it was possible to make caramelized onions using a slow cooker. I dutifully followed the directions and ... no. I got soft, sautéed onions, but not caramelized like I wanted.

Then came a long series of Reddit rabbit holes which ended up with me checking out The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook from the library (How much do we love our libraries?) and reading the recipe for Caramelized Onion Jam (page 61). Wait a minute, caramelized onions? Hmmm. Can Instant Pot do what the slow cooker couldn't?

When The Mister and I were courting, we weren't well off enough to afford restaurant dates. So, we would have "Fancy Dinner" which is where we cooked something we would otherwise purchase at a restaurant, but for below-restaurant prices at home. This macaroni and cheese recipe qualifies. It is more expensive to make than a sub-$1 box of store brand, however every extra penny is worth it in the taste department.

Have you had Golden Curry? It is the tongue-satisfying corporeal embodiment of the flavor: umami. It is stew, cooked in a fraction of the time it takes to cook stew. And it can be cooked entirely in the Instant Pot.

I know there are other Instant Pot Japanese Golden Curry recipes, but they all contain meat and use pressure. This one is just the sauté feature and is vegetarian, making it a dish that can be cooked anywhere there is a power outlet.

Golden curry is WORK though. Nothing minimal effort here. Lots of stirring and cutting on the front end. On the back end is a lot of waiting. This is probably why people in Japan only have this dish a few times a month.