My New Devices: Solutions in Search of Problems

My husband is of the belief that I like gadgets. Some gadgets I do like. Some have changed my life—for example, my first Nook Color ereader and its later replacements. Before that, my Palm Pilot converted me to electronic calendars. And I love my current 13-inch HP Spectre touchscreen laptop, which is small enough to take almost anywhere and keep me productive.

Sometimes I’ve acquired gadgets I didn’t think I needed, then learned how wonderful they were. My first ereader fit that category. So did heated seats in my car—my dad ordered them, not me, but since I inherited his car, I have come to relish them on cold winter mornings, particularly when my back hurts. I never sought to have a sunroof or automatic sliding doors in my minivan, but they came with my Mazda MPV back in 2003, and I regret that my current Mazda 5 does not have them.

But I’m not in love with gadgets for gadgets’ sake. I never carried an iPod of any type, and I see no reason to let Alexa or Siri or any other electronic eavesdropper manage my home.

Despite my (what I consider to be) rational approach to gadgets, my husband continues to buy them for me. This year for Christmas, he bought me an Ember mug and an Instant Pot. I’ve lived happily for 62 years without either, and I could have continued to do without.

The Ember mug in particular seems to be a device seeking to solve a problem I never had. The Ember connects via Bluetooth to my smartphone. With the Ember smartphone app, I can program the mug to keep itself at a constant temperature so that my tea does not get cold. The idea is that one pours hot liquid into the mug, and the mug then keeps itself at the perfect temperature for drinking (or 130 degrees Fahrenheit, by default).

I do drink tea. I do like my hot tea to stay reasonably warm, though it usually cools by the time I finish it. But the Ember mug is an imperfect solution. I keep iced tea in the refrigerator. If I wanted hot tea, my former practice was to pour it into a mug and put the mug in the microwave—in about 90 seconds I had hot tea. With the Ember mug, I pour the tea from the refrigerator into the mug. Then it takes about 30 minutes to heat. Once hot, it does stay warm, which the tea out of the microwave did not. But when the Ember battery dies (which it does fairly quickly after all the exertion of heating tea from refrigerator temperature to my preferred 136 degrees), it starts to cool.

If I heat the tea in the microwave before pouring it into the Ember mug, I get another cup dirty, because the Ember mug can’t go in the microwave. I’d just as soon let my tea cool as have to wash another dish. Hence, why I feel the Ember is a solution to a non-problem.

Many people will probably disagree with my categorizing the Instant Pot as another solution without a problem. It does cook rice nicely, and I didn’t have a dedicated rice cooker. It does cook beans without presoaking, but I have managed for over forty years of marriage to either presoak my beans or use the quick soak method. I’ve never had a pressure cooker, and I’m not really comfortable with pressure cooking. Something might explode, I’ve been told.

My crock pots have served me well over the years—I think I’m on my third since we’ve been married. I know how much I can cook in them. I know how much liquid various dishes need. And I know how long to cook things—it’s almost impossible to cook anything too long. With the Instant Pot, I’m learning all these things from scratch.

To complicate matters, I have an mini Instant Pot—only a three-quart capacity, instead of the standard six quarts. So I have to adapt recipes to be sure they fit. I researched the matter, and learned that the mini pot gets to full pressure faster but cooks at a lower pressure. How do those two factors offset each other—will the mini pot cook faster or slower than the recipe calls for? I have no idea, so I am guessing when I cook.

After over forty years of cooking—something I don’t enjoy in the first place—I have to pay attention to what I’m doing in the kitchen. I’m not sure keeping the rice from boiling over is worth it.

But we did have some good boneless short ribs the other night. And my ham and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day were cooked to perfection without presoaking.

What gadgets do you think are not worth their hype?