Menu plan for the week of April 8

I'm trying to decide if I want an electric pressure cooker.  They seem to be life changing for people who have and use them, but I'm not sure I would actually use one, or that I'm willing to give up kitchen space to store one.

As I see it, the main advantage of electric pressure cookers is that you can cook slow cooker type foods much faster.  So if you find yourself at 4 p.m., having planned a slow cooker meal, but having forgotten to put the meal in the slow cooker (and possibly not even thawed it yet), you could put said slow cooker meal in the pressure cooker and it'll be done in time for supper.  But the thing is, I don't make a whole lot of slow cooker meals because my family tends to not like those sorts of meals, so that's not that much of an advantage for me.

Other kinds of things that I might make in a pressure cooker, like mashed potatoes, hard boiled eggs, rice, or yogurt actually take about the same amount of time in a pressure cooker as they do using other methods, because the cooker has to come up to pressure, then cook for however much time, then release the pressure*.

So I'm just not convinced.  I put it to Facebook, and overwhelmingly, my friends told me that I did want an electric pressure cooker and that I wanted a big one.  Well, all except one.  She got an Instant Pot for Christmas, and it sat on her counter for a while until she decided to relegate it to the garage.

And she's lending it to me.  So I can try it out.  For an unspecified period of time.  I don't think my friend knows that the last time someone lent me a pressure cooker for an unspecified period of time, I kept it (thanks again, mom & dad), and I still have it.

Anyway, I'm excited to try it out.  I actually already had a pressure cooker meal on my menu for this week that I was going to make in the slow cooker.  Next week, I'll have a bunch of pressure cooker recipes, I'm sure.

Do you have an electric pressure cooker?  Do you use it?  What do you make in it?

In the meantime, here's what's on the menu this week:

Supper:

• Two ingredient Instant Pot shredded beef tacos (by the way, don't get excited about that two ingredient thing--it's actually five.  FIVE!), taco toppings, guacamole, tortillas
• Hot dogs, buns, carrots, fresh fruit
• Fend for yourself
• Pizza, salad
• Chicken tenders, carrots
• Hamburgers, buns, grilled veggie
• Nachos using shredded beef leftover from Monday, guacamole

Other:

• Oatmeal chocolate bars (I didn't make these last week because we still had another dessert that we were eating on.  The other dessert is *almost* gone, so I'm sure I'll get to the bars this week.
• Some kind of muffins.  It's been a while since we've had muffins in the house.
• Warm me up sausage quiche.  The girls are laying a lot of eggs.  Gotta use 'em up.

*with these foods, I'm told, the advantage is not in time, but in the fact that you can set it and forget it.  Nothing boils over or makes a mess (well, unless you do a quick release and liquid comes spewing out).  There are two foods: mashed potatoes and dry beans, that always (and I do mean always) boil over when I cook them on the stove.  I'm just not sure that's enough of an incentive to store something that big in my kitchen.