Dateline 4-15-2017

Alright, this is going to be a bit of a potpourri of an update. First off, my fears turned out to be true and the new stronger weed... oops, I mean "meds," didn't help to get me back to sleeping solidly throughout the night. It sucks because when I first got it, I took a few tokes and felt a high as if I hadn't been smoking for weeks.

Where I had to smoke a lot of the old stuff just to feel a buzz, this stuff had me so high that I had to take a nap right away. I woke to see a nice solid line on my Fitbit sleep tracker and felt like I could sleep for a few more hours. At first, I thought I conquered my sleep issues but this morning, after waking from my overnight slumber, I found a chopped up graph showing yet another restless night of sleep.

I'm hoping that this was due to the nap because I do feel like I have more energy. Or maybe I'm just in a better mood because my late night session of smoking had me high and laughing like I haven't been in a while.

Not only did I receive new "meds" yesterday, I also received my Instant Pot 7 in 1 pressure cooker. As someone who dwells in leftover space, I needed something to cook with that is more efficient than my shitty hot plate. I also want to get back to cooking beans and rice from scratch to save me a bunch of money.

I also wanted this thing to cook pre-prepared meals that never cooked evenly on my prior cooking set up. Since the burner is so small on the hot plate only the things in the middle get properly cooked, making even the fanciest of dish to be only half good at best. 

I decided that I was going to test this thing out by cooking a pasta meal in a bag. Normally you would just dump this into a pan and cook each side for five minutes. Not knowing how the pressure cooker works, I thought that this pasta would be a perfect start because I figured the noodles wouldn't be ruined by the addition of the cookers required water.

Part of me figured that all the liquid would be converted to steam that would be released with the opening of the pressure valve. I thought any additional moisture would be absorbed by the noodles and I'd be left with an amazing treat.

Unfortunately, the pressure cooking process doesn't evaporate near as much liquid as I originally thought. Though everything came out tasting just fine at the perfect texture, the Alfredo was more of a soup than a sauce.

Now that I've gotten this trial run out of the way, I think I've learned from my mistakes. I now have to head up to the corner store to buy containers and foil to waterproof the ingredients that need to avoid the extra moisture from the steam.

While I'm there, I think I'm going to grab a bunch of microwave meals. I figure if I can perfect cooking pre-prepared foods and leftovers that just require heat and time, I'll be able to learn the ins and outs of this machine before moving on to the higher end ingredients.

I'm excited to figure this out because I would love to eventually get to the point where I can make batches of food that I can pick at for an entire week. I'm also excited to continue to test out this new weed because whether or not the Fitbit shows it, I'm already feeling much better since yesterday's switch.

Talk to you tomorrow with updates and off to the store I go!!!

Cheers,

The Wicker Breaker