The Cadillac of Crockpots

In my quest to find a quality crockpot, you know one that does not have a hotspot where food always burns and one which won't set your house a blaze and kill Jack, I came up short at local stores or online reviews.  However, I recently discovered two models which look amazing and at a price which makes me hope they are truly a cut above.  If you are looking for a true multi-cooker with an amazingly high quality look and feature set check out the Wolf Multi Function Cooker.  It appears to be the best crockpot, rice cooker, and decent sous vide machine, and it sears, so it's more than a slow cooker.  It better be a rock star for $600.

Since there is no water circulator I would expect the sous vide is not the best, but likely good enough for most things.  I like the probe feature to ensure meat is actually done right vs. "low for 8 hours".

But if you tire of chopping, stirring, mixing, grinding, and weighing by hand and still need a slow cooking, meat searing, food fermenting, computer guided recipe bot which updates itself while you sleep, check out the Termomix T6.  You can probably use a home equity loan to pay for it.

 I expect the T7 will be named Rosie and deliver your meal right to your lap with attitude. 

It's worth noting that none of these are pressure cookers.

Update: If you like what the Wolf does, Instant Pot brand has a very similar unit for 1/5 the price and would likely be my choice if I needed a new slow cooker (it's also NOT a pressure cooker).

Reviving a dead couch

Our much loved leather sleeper sofa had become so saggy our backs got sore and we could barely get out of it.  We added a sheet of plywood under the cushions to firm it up but then it was like sitting on a brick.  We eventually realized the problem was the cushions had worn out.  The solution was replacing the foam inside.  It’s possible to buy foam already cut to size and even wrapped with a batting which protects the foam and fills out the cushion nicely. However ordering those requires exacting measurements and can cost over $100 per cushion.  I chose to buy one large piece of foam and a separate roll of batting from The Foam Factory for $80 total to my door. This made 3 cushions with some foam left over.  One complexity is knowing which foam to pick, there are many options with different firmness, longevity, and materials.  I guessed we wanted a medium firmness (36 lbs ILD) and did not need high quality as this would become secondary seating.

I cut the foam with a bread knife and followed their directions on stapling the batting.  It took simple tools and a couple hours but now the couch is like new.  One trick I learned is rolling the cover off the old cushion allowed you to easily unroll the cover onto the new cushion without having to fight to stuff it in smoothly.

Review: Pampered Chef Quick Cooker

Pampered Chef has their own pressure cooker based multi-cooker ala Instant Pot with a unique look and outlandish list price $240-299.  I’m glad we only paid $23.

Bottomline:
Is it worth it?  No
Is it better than a $70 InstantPot? No

The Good:

• Pressure cooking works well and is simpler and quieter than a stovetop pressure cooker
• Outside stays cool due to insulated plastic outer cover
• Sear mode works well for things like reducing sauces, but not searing as you’ll see below
• Lid is easy to lock, unlock, and remove
• The carrying handles work well 
• Accessory kit is high quality and I’ve read others say it’s amazing, I have not used it yet
• Everything I’ve made so far tasted great.  The ribs recipe which came with it was simple and great. 

The Bad:

• Controls are the worst.  One problem with Instant Pot is having to click + or - a million times to set the time, so I was excited to see a dial which could save time and hassle.  However the dial only selects the mode, not the time. You still have to click + or - repeatably every bit as bad as Instant Pot.  But unlike Instant Pot which has a button for each mode so you can set with one click, you must spin the Quick Cooker’s dial until the proper mode lights up...spin, look, spin, look, spin, look...ridiculous. Is it a big deal? Not really but I’d be embarrassed if I was Pampered Chef. 
• There is no way to control the temperature, so you can’t use it for Sous Vide,  The custom mode only sets pressure and time and it only works for pressure cooking, not slow or sear..
• The steam vent design differs enough from Instant Pot to make steam direction accessories not work
• The steam vent does not always close tightly so steam leaks as it’s heating.  You must fiddle with it while steam is coming out to get it to seal.  Not expected or safe.
• Searing in a deep pot has very limited usage.  Searing a big hunk of meat should be OK but searing diced chicken is unbearable.  It sticks firmly, needs tongs to flip, there is no way to slide a turner/spatula under it, the surface area is small so it needs to be done in batches which means removing one batch to add the next and managing a mess.  Just use a large skillet or fry pan on the stove, easier, faster more effective.  This is the same for all pressure cookers.
• Slow cook only has one temperature which I tested to be 185.  That is a normal low temp on a Crockpot.  Instant Pot has 3 slow cook temperature settings low, mid, high.  
• It’s unclear if the clear Instant Pot slow cook lid will fit and Pampered Chef does not offer one.  Not required but nice to see what’s going on without having to open it up and release heat and moisture.
• A cheap Crockpot has 2 temperature settings, and wide pot and clear lid.  As a result, the Quick Cooker is a poor slow cooker.

General Information:

• Proof keeps water at about 95 with top off (too low for sous vide)
• Slow cook keeps water at about 185 with top off (too high for sous vide)
• Warm keeps the temp at about 165 with top off (too high to souls vide)

Conclusion:

• We had a couple lifetime warranty Pampered Chef pans fail and the credit they gave us allowed us to get the Quick Cooker with accessory kit for $23, otherwise I would have bought a different machine. 
• If you don’t have a pressure cooker, a true multi-cooker could be a versatile tool in the kitchen.  I would look for one which has multiple temperature settings for slow cooking, precise temperature controls for sous vide, a stainless pot like the Instant Pot and Quick Cooker because a non-stick one will wear off and simpler controls.  I would not worry about how many modes it has because they are all just different temp/time/pressure settings and most are max temp and pressure.  Being able to set all 3 allows unlimited “modes”.   
• If you absolutely have to have the Pampered Chef cooker wait for a sale, they have been discounted 50%, but know you are buying one of the worst multi-cookers for more than the most popular one even at 50% off.
• This might be a better all around multi-cooker for 1/2 the price though I have no experience with it:

Update: I found out who makes the PC Quick Cooker - Midea in China.  The Amazon reviews are pretty positive about it and those selling it now are asking over $600 for it. I'm guessing in China is sells for the equivalent of $50.  I stand by my assessment, there are better machines for less money.

Update: Searing works pretty well for reducing a sauce.  If you cook meat for instance and want to turn the juices left into a sauce use sear, add additional ingredients and stir.  It will work for that fairly well and reasonably quick.  You are still leaning over a deep pan and getting steaming sauce in the face but it smells great, so you have that going for you.  You are also not likely under a vent fan as you would be on the stove, so look up at the ceiling after using your Instant Pot for a couple years and I bet you'll be able to tell where it sits when in use.

Focus

“Life is better savored and work is better with focus”

Experiences over stuff in life.

A lack of focus wastes time, resources, muddies your marketing message, and causes confusion among the team. 

Pizza by the pound

I love local businesses. I'll try to support them whenever I can. Not because they grow things locally and they don't haul peppers from Chili. But because I can relate to the underdog. The guy trying to sell against big box stores and chains with marketing and advertising budgets bigger than their life time income. I'm intrigued by the business models they employ. How they can be unique in a world of so many choices.

Today I got my second recommendation to try a new local pizza shop in town called "Nola's Joint". They serve gourmet pizza rumored to be the best tasting pizza around, maybe anywhere. In fact my friend said "At this point I'm so addicted to the stuff that I don't really care how long the line is"

Quality by itself might be enough to make them succeed, especially against the giant chains cranking out eatable disks of bread and cheese by the millions. However Nola (assuming that's the owner) chose to sell her prized pizza by the pound.



The more I think about it the more I think buying pizza by the pound is the dumbest idea ever. Another friend relayed his experience of waiting in a long slow moving line as each person tried to figure out how to get what they wanted. This sounds like a lose/lose situation since all the customer knows is they want 2 slices of pizza and a coke and has no clue how much it might weigh or how much it will cost. Additionally, the restaurant is bound to be left with odd shaped small scraps they can't sell. It must take awhile for workers to know how to cut exactly 1 lb of pizza based on each variety of toppings. Who exactly is this business model helping?

Everyone I know is OK with a pizza being cut into 8 equal pieces. If Nola wanted to give customers more control, then she could sell 1/2 slices. I don't know of any place selling half slices but it might be nice to get a slice and a half some days.

This is like buying a car by volume - "I'll take one blue car with 16.3 cu. feet of space inside please"

How many pounds of pizza do you normally eat?

No guts, no glory

I saw Avatar this weekend and in typical good story form, the character had to overcome impossible odds to achieve a goal that was bigger than himself. Donald Miller would say this is also what makes a good and meaningful life. It takes guts to face impossible odds. There are risks and you may be ridiculed for your resolve and belief, but when you stand firm and see it through the rewards can be great.

I wonder if this is also what makes an interesting and impactful company. Apple, for example, has the guts to stand by their vision, their "higher calling". They don't follow, they lead. They don't worry about comparing themselves to anyone else, they have a vision of how things should be and they push to make it happen no matter what "they" think.

Apple just released the iPad, which no one asked for and which falls short of other products in so many ways. It plays movies yet does not support 1080 resolution, it is not pocketable, memory is not expandable, it has no camera so no video chat, no flash support, you can't replace the battery or anything for that matter, there is no stylus so it's not an artist's pad, it can only run one application at a time. Yet it's simple, relatively cheap, fast, and can run for 10 hours untethered. Apple knew what they wanted. They avoided the mistake of trying to make everyone happy. They did not try to play catch-up with other slate products or even netbooks. They defined their own market, targeted their own audience, and went for it. There is no guarantee it will succeed but taking a risk is the only way to make a real difference.

It takes guts to stand up and be different. It takes guts to stick to your vision even when others don't believe. There are more risks doing things this way, but there are also much richer rewards.

Some companies try to keep up with the crowd, others know where they want to go and blaze their own trail.

Which company would you rather work for?

Which life would you rather live?

Do hard things

I have noticed a disturbing trend in people working hard to find the easiest way to get a job done. My problem is not with a desire for efficiency, it's with pushing to make a marginal solution. The question becomes "What is the bare minimum I could do and still get credit for doing something?" or "What is the smallest feature set we can give the client to get them off our backs?". Instead the question needs to be "How can we knock their socks off and still deliver on time?"

In reality, if we are not striving to do the best and taking opportunity to surprise clients by going beyond what they expected, we are just plodding along punching a clock and collecting a paycheck. Not very inspiring. What excites people is knowing they are building something great, something that matters. The only way to do that is by doing something hard.

One of our engineers spent much of last weekend solving a hard problem. We had decided we could compromise the solution to get it done in time and it would still work OK for most people. None of us were proud of that choice, but what else could we do? By spending his own time, this engineer was able to solve the hard problem and deliver a feature that we can be proud of.

What are you most proud of? I'll bet it is the things that you worked hard to accomplish. If you find yourself trying to figure out how to get out of doing something hard, you may still get a paycheck but you are robbing yourself of the greatest prize - knowing you accomplished something that matters. Don't shy away from the challenges. Hit them head on.

Do hard things.