Weekly Eats: An Air Fryer Upgrade

A weekly roundup: eats, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition we upgraded our air fryer, I cooked purple sweet potatoes for the first time, and even the Instant Pot came out to play.

Before:

After:

Yep, we upgraded the ol' air fryer this week.  We've had ours for over a year, used it a ton, and loved it dearly, but the model that we had was too darn small for a family of four.  For every time that we used it I felt like there were four times when it was too small for what I needed to do.  I'd had my eyes on the model that Jen has but it was out of stock for a long time.  And whaddya know it came back in stock and went on sale just in time for my birthday so I snapped it up.

The new one has a ton more cooking space and flips up when we're not using it so it's out of the way and off our limited counter space.  P.S. those are purple sweet potatoes that I'm frying up...ha ha once the peels are gone so is the purple.

Pros:

• The cooking space!  Exactly what we were looking for!
• More multi-functions that the old one.  It doubles as a toaster and oven, which will come in handy when/if we tackle our long overdue kitchen reno

Cons:

• If you're cooking anything "drippy", like bacon, you have to use the cooking sheet under the frying basket to prevent the food from dripping onto the heating elements, which means you have to flip the food over to get the bottom crisp.
• Harder to check on the food while it's cooking because you have to slide the rack out to see it.
• The outside of the oven gets very hot, which wasn't the case with our old one.

Don't think for a minute that the old one is gathering dust or sitting in a trashcan somewhere...I handed it "up" to my parents and so far they've used it for vegan burgers and sweet potato fries. 

Breakfasts

 Rocking Cliff bars on workout days, odds and ends like homemade Egg McMuffins on rest days.

Lunches

Rocking the salad thing.  Rice, roasted potatoes, salad mix, avocado, dressing, and something crunchy like fritos are the constants.  I started the week with Well Plated's Tempeh Tacos and ended it with shredded buffalo chicken via the Instant Pot.  Yes, you heard right, we busted out our long neglected instant pot.

Dinners
Monday: leftover baked ziti

Tuesday: I worked late so hubs made us a chicken and rice casserole.  Everyone (adults AND kids) loved it.

Wednesday: I stepped up and made us chicken enchiladas.  Things to note, I forgot to pull chicken out of the freezer in time so I baked it frozen and it turned out perfectly.  And Jo's sauce is the best I've made yet.

Thursday: leftover chicken enchiladas, reheated in the air fryer.

Friday: my parents came over with takeout thai food.

Saturday: family birthday bash for a niece at SIL #3's.  Taco bar, margaritas, and cake!

Sunday: leftover cleanout on the enchiladas and chicken casserole.

Watching
For anyone who who's looking for a quirkier take on Unorthodox, check out Shtisel on Netflix.  And yes that's Shira Haas about 2 minutes into the trailer. I'm three episodes in and very happy that the show is much longer than just four episodes.

If you're in the mood for a quirky bang-bang-shoot-em-up,  we also very much enjoyed The Boondock Saints on Amazon Prime.

Sigh, I finished Married at First Sight so I need another trashy reality show to take its place...not gonna lie, I am this close to shelling out $15 of my hard earned cash to watch season 3 of Mama June from Not to Hot on Amazon.

Reading
Finished The Better Sister by Alafair Burke.