The Mighty Mouse of the kitchen.

Do you remember when Mighty Mouse would suddenly show up with his cape flying and say "Here I am to save the day!" ?

Well I do and tonight my Instant Pot made me think of good old Might Mouse.  It was a busy day, I had no plans for dinner and I really hate when that happens.  Another thing I hate is when I have food in the fridge that needs to be used before it goes bad and I have no idea what to do with it.

Tonight I grabbed some of the things I had in the fridge and headed over to my Instant Pot.

I had some fresh broccoli, pasta, assorted cheeses, sour cream, cream cheese and my husband's favorite - those Little Smokies sausages.

 I put the Little Smokies in the pot a covered them with pasta to about 1/2 way up the pot.  Then I covered it all with water until you could just see the water almost to the top of the pasta. I closed the pot and set manual pressure for 3 minutes.

While the pot was cooking I chopped and grated the cheese.  I had some Swiss, Cheddar, Velveeta and Colby. 

I stopped when I grated a little more than cheese!

After 3 minutes were up and the pot was done I let it natural release for about 3 more minutes.  Then I manually released the pressure.  I added all the cheese and slowly mixed it in.  It was very thick so then I mixed Sour Cream and some Cream Cheese to loosen it up a bit.

It turned out thick and yummy and cheesy with those awesome Little Smokies mixed it.  The entire meal took about 20 minutes.

So I feel like my Instant Pot really is like Might Mouse.  I can almost here it call out....
 
"Here I am to save the day!"

Chicken Curry in 15 minutes!

This is my favorite brand of curry.

 When we lived in Japan we used to have something they called Vermont Curry.  It was a mild curry that was perfect with chicken.  One time I was at my friend Masayo's house and she was making Vermont Curry for us to have for dinner.  I noticed the box she was using and realized that what I thought was some kind of secret, super special yummy curry was something I had seen in American grocery stores.  This comes in three flavors, there is a green box, a red box and this orange box.  I don't know what the other ones taste like because I have only ever used this brand. 
Anyway, you can see that I followed the directions and put 2 1/2 cups of water in the pot.  Then I broke the curry pieces up and dropped them in.   I used two leftover chicken breasts, a couple carrots, 4 or 5 small potatoes and a couple stalks of celery.  I chopped them up and dropped them in too.

I closed up my Instant Pot and set it on manual for 4 minutes.  Before I started on the curry I had already put rice in my little mini pot.  Rice in the Instant Pot comes out perfect every time.  One big secret is to rinse the rice really good before you put it in the pot.  White rice is a 1:1 ratio of rice to water.  I also put a little drop of butter in there too.  That helps with foaming.  When it's done just fluff it with a fork and there ya go...perfect rice!

After the Curry cooked for 4 minutes I released pressure and all I had to do was stir it around a bit to mix it all together.  Here's the finished meal.  Delicious!  Chicken Curry over rice.