Gearing up for a week or so of bachelordom. Wife is Taking the kids down to Dunedin for the school hols to visit family - hoping I can get away to join them in the second but looking less and less likely, as I'm going to be short on staff at work.
Haha, I am on week 2 of enforced bachelordom. My wife is visiting her family overseas for 6 weeks. Wow, the house is quiet. I'm taking my little one to Fiji next week as I promised him an overseas holiday before he gets to the hulking teenager stage. I've planted 200 kanuka over winter to hopefully offset some carbon.
Kanuka is my favourite tree!
Yeah, I love it too. It grows better on dry sites than manuka and is a similarly good pioneer though the land where I am seems to want to become a totara forest. They pop up everywhere.
Yeah kanuka is a bit of a nursery tree as well. They do a great job of protecting the other natives. Then when the totara and kauri etc are grown up the kanuka start to die off.
They have beautiful wood too. But part of me wishes they would just live forever.
Looking for some advice please on pressure cookers. Have never used one so am looking for a little advice.
I make my own natto, but have read that cooking the beans is best, and easiest, in a pressure steamer. So I guess a pressure cooker plus a steamer basket.
Looking at the usual search results, boy, there are multitudes listed. Has anyone got a pressure cooker, electric or hob powered, plus a steamer basket that all works, who can give me a pointer please?
Most of the electric ones are multicookers I think. So I guess it depends if you're going to use it for other cooking functions.
We have a cheaper crockpot one we got a couple of years ago. It came with a metal trivet to use inside to lift whatever you put inside above the liquid if you want to steam. I assume you could probably replicate this with a stove top pressure cooker?
That’s interesting, thanks for the Crock-pot pointer. Is your’s a sealed lid, so the cooking is under pressure and therefore quicker? The keeping the food above the liquid thing is a key for me.
It's this one: https://www.crockpot.co.nz/crockpot-range/crockpot-express-xl-pressure-multicooker or an older version of it. It comes with a pressure cooking lid and glass lid for slow cooking.
I see they do actually make a extra pot + steaming basket accessory for it too: https://www.crockpot.co.nz/crockpot-range/crockpot-express-xl-cooking-pot-and-steamer-basket
I'm sure other brands would have something similar for their cookers too.
I’d need the steamer basket, and thought you’d given me the jackpot with that link. However I see this when looking for a retailer - "Unfortunately there are no available retailers for this product".
Ah well, but thanks again for the suggestion.
That's dumb haha. I had a quick look on Amazon AU and it looks like your could probably get knock off ones that could fit any pressure cooker if you check the dimensions carefully. Probably even cheaper if you check Aliexpress.
Like this one
I’d already done the AliE check, and saw loads of steaming baskets. Of course I would need a pressure cooker as well. Maybe the stove top is the way to go with AliE.
Weirdly I thought stovetop pressure cookers would be cheaper, but apparently not so from a cursory search. We paid like $150 on special for our electric one years ago
Well, a great day for me so far. First of all I feel pretty close to baseline (i.e my level of health before mid August)!
Second, I was spoonfeeding a butterfly (I know, I know, but I don't have any pets of my own) because I noticed it had been sitting there for 2 days after hatching, and after it had a long drink and a little flutter around, it saw another butterfly going past, flew up to meet it and they actually started mating.
So I feel like it's out there living its best life.
That's great to hear!
And congrats on your new career as a butterfly matchmaker 🙂
Ha ha I don't think I can take credit for that one. 😃
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