I spent time with my daughter today, and during our drive, she stopped to get gas. I’m almost numb to gas prices. A week ago, gas was $4.40/gallon, and today it was $5.10/gallon. How do people who drive every day afford that? Let’s look at another frugal recipe; this one is very simple.

One reality of being retired while your wife continues to work is that you are often home alone. Lunchtime rolls around, and for me, I want the easiest option possible. Our house is stocked with food, and I don’t mind cooking for more than one, but just for me? Make a meal just for myself? Often, I say, “nah.”

That was exactly how I felt the other day. Soup didn’t sound good; a sandwich seemed uninteresting; scrambled eggs was too much work (lazy, I know). I remembered that I picked up a sack of sweet potatoes when I was grocery shopping a few days earlier. I could wrap a potato in cling wrap, zap it in the microwave, and top it with some cinnamon, butter, and brown sugar. That sounded OK, and more importantly easy. However, when I looked at the actual sweet potatoes I was disappointed as they were small, skinny things. One would never be enough; and I didn’t want to wrap 3 and then try to figure out a microwave time. Additionally, they were too small for a classic baked sweet potato treatment.

The electric pressure cooker (Instant Pot) to the rescue! Unlike a microwave, which requires different times for different amounts of food, a pressure cooker will cook one potato or five potatoes at the same time if they are roughly the same size. Here is what I did:

I washed these puny sweet potatoes, and then pierced them with a fork. This lets out internal steam and prevents a potato explosion.

Today I was using my 3-quart Instant Pot Mini. I got it quite a while back at a thrift store for $20 in like-new condition. I’m using the trivet that came with the pot, as you need to elevate it above the 1 cup of water that the pot needs to generate steam. You could certainly use a larger pot if that is what you had. The Instant Pot doesn’t care.

I closed the lid and made sure the release valve was in the sealing position.

Using the pressure cook control, I set the time to 15 minutes. That was a bit of overkill, but I wanted the sweet potatoes cooked through.

When the time was up, I immediately released the pressure and opened the pot.

It was amazing how easily I could peel the sweet potatoes by hand. Naturally, they were hot. I think using an Instant Pot would be a great option if you needed to make a lot of sweet potatoes for a classic sweet potato/marshmallow casserole for Thanksgiving.

I added about 1T brown sugar and 1T butter, plus a dash of salt. I was going to add cinnamon and nutmeg, but I found pumpkin pie spice in our spice cabinet, which is almost the same thing, so I added a couple of dashes and mashed everything together with a fork.

I topped it off with some more butter because, of course, I did. This turned out to be a very pleasant, if different, lunch. Sweet potatoes are full of fiber, beta-carotene, and vitamin C. Good for your eyes, gut health, and immune system. A very simple, but interesting lunch. Would I want to eat this everyday? Probably not, but I certainly would consider it on occasion, and using the Instant Pot make the preparation almost automatic.

Peace

Mike

Peace

Mike