While I was in Kansas last week I heard an awful lot about air fryers. Seems all my friends and family have them. One of my mom’s friends was even trying to convince me on the phone to buy one! “You outta get you one, Missy! They are great!” Well, you know how I feel about small appliances, y’all. If you don’t know this: I HATE THEM. That is legit. Matter fact I went to Target and bought a toaster the other day for my mom’s visit, then told her to take it with her when she leaves and give it to someone. I don’t want a damn toaster. Here’s the thing, I don’t want anything that my oven, stove, or decade-old crockpot can do so that eliminates essentially all kitchen gadgets.

I don’t need an Instant Pot, I have a crock pot and a large ceramic pot and a wok that fits snuggly into my wok rack on my gas stovetop.

I don’t need an air fryer because (and hear me out) an air fryer works by a convection method. So does my oven.

Now don’t think I just blatantly said no. In fact, I Googled this air fryer thing, just like I Googled the Instant Pot thing. I figured out how they worked and the truth is, in the case of the air fryer, we don’t eat fried foods. So if I were to buy one I would just feel compelled to start eating French fries and onion rings, which are not part of our normal meals now. I would hop on board with all these foods, the ones I think we can all agree are unhealthy regardless of how you cook them, and I don’t need that in my life.

My mom’s friend was all, “Shrimp! You can fry shrimp!” And I was like ohhh, that sounds good. Then I realized I never fry shrimp anyway. I bake it or boil it. So I don’t even need to eat fried shrimp, but it did certainly sound appealing for a minute. Besides the fact that people are still adding oil to the air fryers, because as previously stated, the name is a misnomer. It doesn’t actually fry anything, it cooks just like a convection oven. (Throws hands in the air) Maybe it’s faster?!

Listen, I don’t know where my hatred of kitchen gadgets came from. Probably from my desire to have as little as possible on my countertops. I can’t stand a kitchen that has things all over the counter. And I don’t like it when things beep at me to tell me I’m done. It’s like this rice cooker I got when I was way into sushi making. I thought, oh this will make life easier. Well, sushi making is hard as shit, y’all and now my rice cooker sits under a cabinet never to be seen or heard from again.

Oh hey, how about that time I bought a dehydrator because I wanted dried bananas. It took like 12 hours to dehydrate five bananas and then Jackson and I ate them all in one afternoon. Hmpf. Pass. Now that dehydrator has a better home, with a friend who hopefully uses it more than once a year.

Like most of these posts lately this one has no point except to say I appreciate all the people wanting my life to be better. I get it, trust me. It’s like therapy and me. I love therapy and I’m always trying together people to get their own therapists because it is so helpful. You love your kitchen gadgets and you want me to love them too. How about this, when y’all get you a therapist, I’ll get me an InstaPot. Or maybe a toaster I won’t give away.

Deal?

M.