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Patty Leon: Random musings for the New Year
Patty Leon new

If you follow me on Facebook, then you’ll know that Mom and I got a Ninja Foodi for Christmas. At first, I didn’t get what the big deal is, but after trying a few recipes I now understand the ADDICTION that is being an air fryer, pressure cooking, Insta- pot FREAK.

Sure, it started innocently enough. Let’s see if we can make some short ribs. The regular recipe, either in a slow-cooker or Dutch oven, calls from more than three hours if you want tender fall-off-thebone ribs that doesn’t taste like leather. BUT with a Ninja Foodi it was ready in 55 minutes! Oh, and how about placing the ingredients for a fried rice recipe inside the pot, placing the cooking rack in and adding your protein on the rack, close the lid, pressure cook, change the lid for crisping and eating Teriyaki Pork loins with Fried rice and broccoli in 30 minutes!

What is this wizardry? Why didn’t someone hype me up to join this club months ago? Why did I try gardening, which I suck at, and not jump into this food craze immediately (which I’m good at)!

I’m all in! I spent the weekend at Ollie’s (Good Stuff Cheap) sorting through stacks and stacks of cookbooks and picked out 3-4 that featured recipes specifically for this new magical method of cooking. Monday morning Mom was reading through the books, marking pages, so I can make shopping lists.

Our madness will be briefly interrupted while I make a quick trip to Hinesville next week. But rest assured, the freezer will be stocked and the kitchen will be in full experimental mode upon my return.

I’ll be eating new things all year long and 2022 just got started.

And knowing I’ve already gained enough weight (thank you Covid and having a job where I’m seated all day), I’m preparing to add a little bit of physical activity into my daily routine. It’s been totally lacking for the past two years!

NO THIS IS NOT A WEIGHT LOSS RESOLUTION!

We talked about that madness last week. It is merely a decision to move around a bit more so I can make room for all the new food that is coming into my life this year.

So far, I am loving this new kitchen technology!

And speaking of technology, are our current phone house lines (what we called landlines, not your cellphone) truly better than the landlines we had when many of us were children?

Okay technically these newer landlines are called VoIP (voice over internet protocol), but still.

It is connected through your internet. I mean it’s not a true landline if your phone goes out as soon as you lose your internet connection.

Back in the day, we had real landlines. The entire power grid could go down (think Texas last winter) and you could still pick up the phone call a relative and complain that you lost power.

Technology has really changed, especially throughout my lifetime.

I grew up listening to music on vinyl records, which morphed into eight-track tapes and cassettes (especially for your car), and then CDs. Today you can listen to music via your computer or cellphone. I can recall when Pandora was only recognized from Greek Mythology and the story of Pandora’s box.

When we had to type up a school report it was done on an old fashion manual typewriter, which then morphed into an electrical typewriter. That soon morphed into a word processor, the precursor of our modern-day computers and now laptops and tablets. And I can still remember the early days of the world wide web. Connecting to the internet back then was done via your landline on a dial up service connector.

I bet young people today don’t have a clue of the origins of American Online (Otherwise known as AOL). I still have my original AOL email address! Now that’s OLD SCHOOL!

There is an entire generation who doesn’t know about MySpace, founded in 2003 and is the precursor to Facebook and the first original social media site!

While Facebook has morphed into a social mess filled with a lot of misinformation and people who just use the site to spew hatred, MySpace has morphed into the best music and cultural arts social media site I can remember (and it still is. If you didn’t know MySpace still exists). I think I might take a nostalgic trip back in time and join MySpace again!

Patty Leon is senior editor of the Courier.

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