Under Pressure, How our Instant Pot Giveaway Can Crush Your Seasonal Sadness
Head over to our Facebook page to enter in the giveaway!
(Guest blogger Michelle Lewis lives with her family of 6, raising 3 boys and a little
girl, just a few miles down the road from Peace Valley Poultry)
It’s March! Spring is around the corner. January and February can be a lousy
months for many people. We hope they weren’t too lousy for you! The let down
and finality of the Christmas season, for some the relief that it’s over, and the illness and dreary weather can all be hard to handle. Growing up in Indiana my mom, who is one of the happiest people I know, always joked that we should remove January and February off the calendar. “Just throw them away,” she would say laughing.
While we can’t actually throw them away, Peace Valley Poultry is doing their best to
defeat the funk that the winter season can bring.
The Instant Pot is the reason my January and February 2018 have been really quite
fun. It has been a Christmas gift turned winter blues killer. (Some people go to
Florida, I use my new Instant Pot… to each his own I guess.) I’m sure consistently
taking my vitamin D, a little less stress in my life than last year, although we’ve
added a baby, and prayer is helping me get through winter too, but my new Instant
Pot hasn’t hurt anything that’s for sure.
I didn’t know I wanted the Instant Pot. I thought it was a fad. An expensive fad that
would take up more room in my kitchen and I wouldn’t have a place to put it. Well,
as it turns out, it has earned a permanent place on my counter and I’m happy every
time I look at it!
What’s the Instant Pot have to do with Peace Valley Poultry?
Ideally, from a marketing standpoint, I’d be a recognized blogger here in Missouri
with a following of people that love healthy living, sharing this info with you all and
sharing Peace Valley Poultry with all my personal fan base and following. Back-
linking and hyper-linking all over the place to and helping grow Peace Valley’s
following along the way. Instead, I’m just a friend and neighbor of the Protivas,
without a blog of my own or significant following expect for my 3 year old and the
occasional bottle calf, here to announce their “Break Free from the Winter Blues
Instant Pot Giveaway!”
Peace Valley Poultry is giving away 1 free Instant Pot to help kick your winter blues!
Like and Share their post on Facebook to enter to win!
Did you know bone broth from animals that have been raised in the outdoors is a
good source of vitamin D? It’s a great source of a lot of nutrients actually. And
guess what? You can make bone broth in the Instant Pot too!
Here’s a little window into my life and how I justify this healthy chicken for our
budget.
Take one of their chickens (approx. 4lbs in weight at $3.25 per pound if purchased
at the farm) Do the rough math. Let’s say $15 a whole chicken.
I have 4 kids, 3 of whom actually eat dinner at the table; the other is 5 months old.
I can put a frozen whole chicken into the instant pot at 4:15 and it is done at 5:30.
What can you do with that whole chicken?
Let’s break down what I did a few nights ago.
1. Eat some of the chicken for dinner.
2. Debone the chicken for chicken salad. Save some dark meat will be for the next
day’s soup.
3. The bones go right back into my Instant Pot with scraps of onion and celery,
herbs I have on hand or from my garden. I’m so thankful my sage stays in alive in
the winter! Add a splash of apple cider vinegar because all the healthy websites tell
you to do so. This helps leech the minerals out of the bones, which is why it’s so
important to have an excellent and healthy source of chicken or beef if you’re
making beef broth. Twist the lid, turn it on, pressure cook for 1.5 hours and you’ll
have mushy bones and gelatinous broth once it cools in fridge.
Broth done? Check
Chicken for soup? Check
Decide what chicken based soup you’d like to make and sauté all your veggies
(onions, garlic etc.) directly in the instant pot using the sauté setting.
Add your broth.
Add beans or other veggies or a can or two of tomatoes.
Pressure cook for 10-20 minutes depending on what kind of soup you’re making (if
beans have to cook etc.)
Sometimes I even have leftover broth that I can use for another meal or with rice.
Here’s the breakdown. A $15 chicken isn’t $15 for one meal. For our family it’s 3-4
meals. And it’s 3-4 meals of healthy, nutritious goodness!
Or the other night I made this recipe and used Peace Valley Poultry’s porterhouse
steaks.
I also set aside some of the beef for beefy vegetable soup.
After cutting all the meat off the steak bones, I roasted them in the oven at 300
degrees for a couple hours for better flavor and then after dinner threw the bones in
the pot with water, sage, onions, splash of apple cider vinegar and pressure cooked
on high for 2 hours and it kept warm until the next morning when I had the energy
to strain it and make beef stew for lunch.
The Instant Pot is more than a “fix it and forget it” crockpot. It’s a “Fix it and never
look at it or think about it again until it’s done,” kind of kitchen item. There’s no
accidental burning or over boiling or forgetting the stove is even on while I help one
of my children with something they need. Cue the “Mom! Lane is into the….” You fill
in the blank.
I can push the button and clean up my messy kitchen while it cooks my dinner. No
stirring and abruptly turning the temperature from high to low to medium to high
again to low etc. because I’m slightly impatient in the kitchen and usually start
everything on high to quickly get it to temperature and then have to turn it way
down quickly.
Food quality? All of my soups and stews taste like they’ve been slow cooking and
simmering for hours. Delicious.
Could an Instant Pot really kick your winter blues?
We’d love for you to have a chance to try it! Just jump to our Facebook page and like
and share our post to enter to win.
Also, please share with us your ideas and experiences with the instant pot!