Distracted dining while sorting several months’-worth of magazines for tomorrow’s recycling pick-up. The cooking mags stay.

Dinner tonight was tasty leftovers from my first try at Instant Pot cooking. “We can’t keep these in stock,” the clerk at Williams-Sonoma told me last weekend as she rang up my new pressure cooker/slow cooker/steamer. “It’s like a cult,” she added cheerily.

I learned one vital aspect of pressure cooking with this first effort, and that’s to position the appliance where its steam valve can do no harm to kitchen cabinetry when released. (A section of door is permanently dulled now, I’m afraid.) The force of steam generated by the Instant Pot is impressive, and so is the noise it makes when it spews. Next time, maybe I won’t jump out of my skin.