Instant Pot to the Rescue!

Perfect save when the gas is shut off

Instant Pot tortilla soup (with a little bean chili thrown in).

Imagine a food blogger without a stove! An addicted baker without her oven!

It’s a nightmare! But it’s a true story—and it started like this.

“Yup,” the man from the Southern California Gas Company said when he walked into my yard. “You got a leak.”

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said. “We don’t do that. You gotta call a plumber.”

“Do you know a good one for this kind of job?”

“Sorry, ma’am, we aren’t allowed to make recommendations.”

“But what am I supposed to do?” I wailed.

“I don’t know, ma’am. But you don’t want your house to blow up, do you?”

Then he shut off the gas to the house and red-tagged the offending pipe.

I’d just finished baking a batch of bagels. The kitchen was toasty warm, the bagels beautiful and brown.

A final batch of bagels before the gas got shut off!

But now no oven. No heat. No hot water. And I had to find a plumber. Quick.

But it wasn’t so easy. Two plumbers I reached out to were sick with Covid. The third crawled under my deck and dug around in the dirt for an hour but couldn’t find the gas line to the house. He thought it might be buried under concrete and suggested repiping the whole thing at a cost of almost $5,000. “It’ll cost you even more if I bust up the concrete,” he said.

I called a fourth plumber.

Meanwhile the warmth from my kitchen quickly evaporated. I ate two bagels. I threw a few more blankets on the bed and wondered if the fireplace would work. No dice. Gas starter. Plus we hadn’t used it in the 25 years we’d lived in the house. Probably burn the place down. Oh well. It’s Southern California, not Nebraska. Temps in the 40s and 50s, nothing worse.

“It’s not that bad,” scoffed my husband Jeff when I called him. “It’ll be fixed soon.”What did he know? He was out of town scouting out another Photowalks episode. Lucky duck!

The next day, as I waited for the plumber, I pulled out my Instant Pot. It’s something I almost never use. At 3 or 4 years old, it’s shiny and looks new. I decided to make soup—what else on a cold day without a stove?

I made chicken broth from leftover bones, then tortilla soup minus the tortillas (here’s a recipe for an Instant Pot version I found online, but usually, when I have a working stove, I make my own stovetop recipe). It’s Jeff’s favorite. I added some leftover chili and a lot of shredded chicken. Served with grated cheddar and a toasted bagel, it was the perfect solace.

I thought about other solutions if the gas stayed off for a week or more. I could fire up the barbecue or the toaster oven, which apparently has an air fryer function I’ve never tried. There’s always the trusty Crock-Pot. Eat out? Order in? Silly me! So many options—and me having a meltdown. How spoiled we are!

The offending section of pipe the plumber removed and replaced.

The fourth plumber—actually a clever team, Ben and Mack—arrived on Day 5 and proved to be the charm. The source of the leak was a piece of corroded pipe with a pinprick hole.

So now our house is warm, the oven’s blazing, my hot shower awaits, and I have a newfound respect for creature comforts I have all too often taken for granted. In earthquake country and perilous times, I realize, you can’t afford to do that.

As for the stove, the first thing I made were fried tortilla chips to go with the soup. The second was a lovely one-pot vegetable pasta dish (that I bet you anything could be made in an Instant Pot!).

Next, I think I’ll make some more of those bagels. They really were pretty—and tasty—and now mostly gone! The recipe is from my reliable go-to source, King Arthur Baking. It’s their “Recipe of the Year.” Here’s the link.

Thanks for reading this edition of RuthTalksFood. Thanks also to my new subscribers. Your vote of confidence means a lot. See you next time.