Return to the Mindful Chef
Mindful Chef is one of the recipe box schemes that I particularly like. I first used them back in 2016, and since then I have had several continuous subscriptions with them, with breaks in between.
Foodi Slow Cooked Stew
I’ve been having great fun with the Foodi as an air fryer and pressure cooker, but this is my first experiment with the Foodi as a slow cooker. Beef and mixed veg in a beef and red wine stock.
Foodi Adventures: Banana Chips.
I ran the Foodi in dehydrator mode overnight, dealing with some bananas I needed to use up. This was my first experiment with the dehydrator, and it was a great success.
More Green Tomatoes
I’ve been harvesting the odd tomato here and then, as the ripen on the vine, but I have now given up and stripped my plants of the remaining tomatoes. Which are actually quite a few.
Last Broccoli From The Garden
Having finished up all the good broccoli heads from the garden during the summer, the plants kept giving. Once the heads were taken, the offshoots start flowering – broccoli spears.
Meat: Donald Russell Limited
Just had a wonderful meat delivery from Donald Russell. I was a little concerned, as it had been delayed a day by DHL, but Russells assured me that their frozen shipping packaging is good for 48 hours. Indeed, when it arrived, it was still frozen.
Gadget: Ninja Foodi Max Multicooker OP500UK.
The Ninja Foodi is a combined pressure cooker, slow cooker and air fryer. It manages this by having two lids. The Air Fryer lid is permanently attached, hinged at one side, and containing a powerful heating element and fan. With that raised out of the way, you can use the Pressure Cooker lid, which locks on to the cooker.
Moving from Air Fryer to Foodi – Ease of Cleaning
I’ve just replaced my Ninja Air Fryer with a Ninja Foodi – more on that, later. It was a sensible move, in that it combined the functions of at least 3 large counter top devices – Air Fryer, Instant Pot and Slow Cooker – into one. My old Air Fryer and trusty Morphy Richards Sear & Stew slow cooker are going into storage, freeing up much needed space in my kitchen. My Instant Pot has been donated to some very grateful neighbours, who are going to make good use of it.
Tomato!
Just had my first ripe tomato from this year’s plants.
Yum.
ProQ Steel Food Smoking Cabinet
Seven years ago, I bought a ProQ Cold Smoking Kit, which consisted of a ProQ Cold Smoke Generator – a square metal mesh maze, which you load with wood dust and slowly burns from the outside to the centre – and a smoking chamber.
That smoking chamber, surprisingly, was made of cardboard. The new one is galvanised steel.