This book convinced me to get an Instant Pot.

Okay, backing up. If you’re unfamiliar with Crip Up the Kitchen by Jules Sherred, it’s a cookbook written specifically to make the kitchen more accessible for disabled cooks. Jules Sherred discusses his motivations and process for publishing the book on an excellent Queries, Qualms, and Quirks episode. A web search will also yield news articles and blog posts discussing this book in depth.

This is the first cookbook I’ve read that puts accessibility front and center. All its recipes are designed with conditions such as chronic pain and executive function struggles in mind. The recipes leverage electric pressure cookers, which can be set and left to run, and offer mise en place prep lists. They also have spoon ratings (low spoons = minimal effort, high spoons = more effort). They even include vegetarian substitution options for the meats, which I appreciate.

But the best part is that it offers far more than recipes. It provides advice for bulk ingredient preparation, long-term storage (freezing and canning* options), and electric pressure cooker usage for your own recipes, based on whatever ingredients you have that require the most cook time. It also suggests organization strategies and ways to make your kitchen space easier to use.

[*Important note: if you try canning, use a pressure canner that reaches and sustains the required temperature. From what I’ve read, the Instant Pot Max does not achieve this for low-acid foods, which can carry botulinum spores.]

Jules also emphasizes that his advice is not meant to be prescriptive, that not every detail will suit every cook’s needs. It’s very much, here, here is my approach and strategies that may be useful for you. Take what serves you and adapt it to suit you.

That’s good, because it’s nigh impossible for a single book or author to imagine every angle or fit every type and degree of disability. The advice is primarily focused on disabilities that affect energy levels, physical (dis)comfort, and clarity of thought. Blind cooks, for example, may have additional or different considerations. (I’m a sightie (i.e. not blind) so will defer to non-sighties on this. But one thing I’m seeing on a quick search is ensuring that the Instant Pot you get can be operated with tactile buttons or a screen reader friendly app.)

So. Since this book places accessibility front and center, and I’m sitting here rambling about it, I should point this out: I’m not the target audience. I’m an able-bodied neurotypical person. Some might think I don’t need this book, that I don’t benefit from devices and procedures that make cooking more accessible to folks with physical and mental struggles.

Not so.

The whole day job, night school, writing projects, and martial arts juggling act stretches me thin. I get exhausted and overwhelmed. And once I hit a certain threshold, the last thing I want to do is expend effort to acquire or prepare nutritious food. My appetite disappears, too.

Bruh, it’s so much easier to eat well if I can chuck ingredients in a magic pot, wander off, and come back to delicious, sustaining food.

Seriously. Magic pot is worth it just for the legumes. Turns out I prefer the texture and flavor of pressure-cooked dried black beans over the canned variety, which means I enjoy my black bean chili more, which means it’s easier to convince myself to eat it. And it’s easier to convince myself to make it, and to find the time, when I don’t have to plan ahead or watch the pot or clock. Prep strategies that the book recommends, like getting frozen pre-chopped veggies or batch chopping veggies in advance to use whenever, further reduce the planning, labor, and mental overhead required.

Most people, at one point or another, struggle with fatigue or an excess of obligations. Many get sick or injured in ways that disable them short-term, too. (Broken limbs. Thrown backs. Rough bout of flu. Etc.) And while the book would be most excellent even if it “only” served its target audience (which is… something like 25% of humans? Don’t quote me on that, but it’s a lot of people), it goes beyond that. The same strategies that make a kitchen accessible for the disabled cook make life easier for everyone. And I think that’s neat.