Here’s an unusual one - an M.2 SSD to USB adapter.
Most, if not all, laptops come with SSD’s nowadays, and they’re usually pretty easy to take out from a laptop. Gather some old, broken laptops, and take out their SSD’s. They’re so much faster than USB flash drives, I prefer to use SSD’s where possible. Plus, it helps with e-waste
This is it for me. I don’t go through many laptops on my own, but ask around your family? You can get quite a stack of e-waste pretty quickly. Especially if you’ve already been labeled the “tech guy” of the family
Could even make this a little simpler - if somehow you’re not using an SSD at least as the primary boot, please god change that immediately. $50 can easily get you 512gb, often even a TB.
I recently got a sling bag for my EDC needs. It weights 1.2 kg loaded. the same as whole backpack that I used for years. It is quite good for if I need to go light but I want to grab some stuff and pockets are already filled to the brim with stuff.
Lanolin is a bitchin’ moisturizer like for everything—particularly your chapped lips. Haven’t tried it for any other of my chapped bits but the same principle extends.
There’s a cream called Corona cream, with lanolin as the main ingredient. It’s geared to veterinary rather than human use, but it’s fantastic and can be bought in gigantic tubs.
I mean, if you ignore the usual “pea size amount” they usually recommend and only use the truly minimum amount, I can’t see myself having to buy more for like 6-7 years at a time. For like a $15 tube of the one for moms
Instant Pot (on sale): There is legitimately so many things you can make in these. Many of them do sous vide too, which is one of the best ways to cook meat.
Powered ratchet: For anyone who works on their own vehicles, a cheap powered ratchet is a godsend. I bought one for oil changes and car repairs and it’s my most used tool in my bag. I’m mad I spent so much time without one. Walmart’s Hyper Tough brand powered ratchet is $40 and holds up very well. Extended reach one is often on sale for $50-55.
E-Ink reader: Another often on sale item. If you have someone who loves books, having an entire library in your pocket with a built-in backlight for night reading that’s also easy on the eyes is a great thing. Coupled with Calibre and some…sourced epub files…and you can read a lot for free.
Vacuum sealer: Never have freezer burned stuff again. And keeps things fresh in the fridge longer. Also works great for sous vide for the above-mentioned Instant Pot.
Can you share some instant pot meals/ideas? I got one and it barely gets used. Every time I look stuff up or ask peoole it’s the same “crack chicken” recepies.
Mine is essentially a big power hungry medium boiled egg maker. Really wish it got more use.
Anything sous vide (if yours has a sous vide button). You can use ziplock bags in Leiu of a vac sealer. Chicken or steak sous vide and then quick seared in a hot pan for color is the best.
Olive Garden style Chicken Gnocchi soup (dozens of copycat recipes online). You can buy pre-packaged gnocchi or make it yourself. Get a loaf of French bread to toast cheap at the grocery store and it’ll blow your mind.
Basically any Chili recipe can be made 5-10x faster pressure cooked. No need to simmer it for hours.
Use it as a rice cooker. Pressure cooked white rice tastes like Chinese restaurant sticky rice and take 10 minutes. Get a box of frozen orange chicken from Costco and you’ve got Orange chicken over rice in about 18 minutes. Or cook some refried beans, brown rice, and fried eggs for a quick breakfast. Nothing beats a salt and pepper runny yolk egg soaked into rice.
Hard boiling eggs you mentioned already, but if you like egg salad it’s a great way to make easy peal boiled eggs for mashing into egg salad in the fridge.
Those are just a few things I use mine for ranging from moderate to simple.
Dried beans (includes garbanzo etc). With an automatic pressure cooker like that cooking dried beans goes from an ordeal where you have to soak them overnight and watch a pot for 5 hours and probably get indigestion because they’re undercooked anyway to, spend 2 minutes throwing in the beans and water and pressing the button and then come back sometime between 1-5 hours later to perfectly cooked beans. Save money and space in your pantry getting rid of cans.
Clam chowder - creamy New England style, I add extra seasonings to amp it up. The clams I get in cans and bottled clam juice so the only non-shelf-stable ingredients are onions, carrots, celery, and garlic (…instantpot.com/…/new-england-clam-chowder-2/) My additions: To make it more hearty and thick I do 3 cans of clams instead of 2, 4ish strips of bacon bits, an extra stalk or 2 of celery, between 1.5 and 2 lbs of potatoes instead of 1, and parsley and paprika in the same amounts as the thyme and oregano.
Spaghetti carbonara - my new cook book addition. grating the cheese adds more work, but overall still very simple as far as instant pot recipes go - saute the pancetta and reserve, saute onion and garlic, pressure cook pasta in broth, stir in butter, cream, cheese, egg, and pancetta when done (pressureluckcooking.com/instant-pot-spaghetti-car…)
Corn chowder - really similar to the clam chowder but good for if you’re not feeling seafood, like most of the recipes I favorite, the steps mostly amount to dumping all the ingredients in, pressure cooking, and stirring in something extra at the end (in this case cornstarch and half&half to thicken) (www.tasteofhome.com/…/instant-pot-corn-chowder/)
I also use the instant pot some for other recipes but I lean heavily towards 1 pot meals and stuff where I can get away with putting 90% of the ingredients in for the pressure cooking step, that does mean a lot of soups but I’m working on adding more pasta dishes to my repertoire.
The ribs are the simplest, at its most basic all you have to do is remove the membrane on the back and then curl it up on a trivet over a cup of water, pressure cook high for 25 minutes and let sit under pressure for 10-25 more minutes after it’s done (depending on how fall-off-the-bone you want, I usually like 25mins), glaze with bbq sauce and broil in the oven until it gets a bit of char.
You can also salt & pepper it before putting it in, use apple cider vinegar instead of water, and/or add a few drops of liquid smoke in the instant pot. But it turns out great even when I forget to do those things so really all you need is ribs and sauce.
The last one isn’t really a pressure cooker recipe, but you can make nearly any slow cooker recipe a pressure cooker recipe by just cooking it under pressure for about 30-45 minutes.
Pressure cooker corn risotto - also pretty easy, and you can absolutely sub canned or frozen corn if you don’t have/want to deal with corn cobs. Just bring frozen corn up to temp on saute mode before you start pressure cooking.
If you have decent freezer space, there’s no excuse to not use a vac sealer. I have so many friends that constantly complain about meat prices but don’t take advantage of buying meat on sale in bulk. With a vac sealer, you can really get ahead. Also processing and preparing your own meat products (burgers, sausage).
We also vac seal soups and broths!
Also, on the topic of slow cookers, while not $50 and under, a ninja foodi is a pressure/slow cooker and air fryer combo. I literally use mine everyday. It gets more use than my microwave or stove.
How do you vacuum seal things with liquids? Mine says absolutely no liquids, like if it gets a single drop of moisture on it, the company will come shoot me
That’s odd, mine actually has a “moist” mode. It has a little cavity where any juice that get sucked up go. You just have to empty it often if you’re doing alot of meats that are juicy. As for soups, I do one of two methods, freeze over night in a Tupperware, then remove from Tupperware and Vac seal or ill just let it cool and vac seal, which might leave a small air gap, but I haven’t notice it effect the soup like it does meat.
I recently got a double puffy blanket in my endevors to stsy warm while living offgrid. Its one of ny favorite posessions now I use a lot. Feels great, Keeps you very warm when cold, and can be buttoned up as a cloak/poncho. This Halloween I drunkenly wandered around town in near freezing weather with it in and was comfy as hell. Protected me from wind and fufilled my secret dream of wearing a batman cloak.
I am the night, bitch! snuggles up into blanket cloak
Pre bottled Soylent got me through a very rough time in grad school when I couldn’t eat because I was afraid to leave my room. The powdered stuff wouldn’t have worked because you have to prep it and clean up (meaning I would have to have left my room). So pre bottled practically saved my life.
I’ve moved past that now. It’s a bit pricey to keep up with when you go pre bottled and it’s not available in stores like Walgreens. Plus the best flavor (Cafe Mocha) was hurting my stomach. The only other flavor I didn’t mind was the strawberry flavor. All the others kind of suck. But it really has some pretty good utility.
If I’m ever in a pinch now, I just go with whatever nutrition shake is at my local corner drug store instead. Usually it seems to be a brand like Ensure or something. I can’t stand the regular chocolate or vanilla flavor that these meal shakes generally have, so I try to seek out a dark chocolate. Soylent didn’t seem to have that yet when I stopped buying from them.
I was super stressed out from grad school and living with roommates at the time. I didn’t realize I would have an issue living with other people, as I had never done it before. I suppose you could call it extreme social anxiety or something. I was afraid of running into them or them seeing me or seeing what I eat even though they were all nice. I was just weird. After I graduated, I was able to get my own place so I didn’t have that problem anymore.
I’ll second the meat thermometer. I bought one a little while ago and find that it prevents me from overcooking things out of an overabundance of caution.
I bought a scale to start measuring my coffee a couple years ago and only recently realized I could be using it for cooking. Was definitely a game changer
Yep, got one. They’re lovely and read in one second and are extremely accurate, but a simple 4 or 5 second reader will do the job just fine for most applications. Those can be had for around 25 USD.
Tozo wireless earbuds (noise cancelling!).
Airfly pro - a little widget that allows you to Bluetooth from the seat back entertainment system on planes.
A fold up kettle.
Nanobags.
If you can ever manage to do so, get a rabbit pelt blanket. Even better if from a small home family farm.
I once got introduced to one of these blankets by a person that rears rabbits for food and at some point decided it was time to stop wasting the pelts.
After some experimentation with tanning at home, the person learned how to salt cure and never let another go to waste.
It’s extremely soft and heavier than what is expected but not in a cumbersome way and develops a lot of heat in a very short time.
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