The Ninja Foodi sat on the counter inside the rig, new to the space and new to him, and rswfire set the camera down where it could see the pan. He had made chili before. He had never made it in this. He did not know whether the appliance would brown meat at all, so he ran the AI as a procedural reference alongside the work — pausing the recording each time he needed to consult it, then returning to narrate what he had learned. The oil went in on medium heat. Before anything else happened, he asked the first question that mattered: how much power are you using. One hundred watts. He noted it aloud, because the number was not trivia. It was the first entry in a ledger he would keep for the rest of the session.
The oil spread and pooled, and in the way it pooled he read something about the rig itself. Not as level as I should be, he said — pretty level, but not level. This is part of living in an RV. He tilted the pan a little on the AI's suggestion and watched the oil answer, and called it fascinating. Then he waited for the shimmer. He waited, and it did not come, and he said he had been staring at it for minutes and saw nothing, and named the cost directly: this is a waste of power, my solar power is sacred. The waiting had a price, and he was the one paying it.
He went in without the shimmer. His food safety gloves were gone — he had one left somewhere, he said, and did not know what happened to the rest — and he stated plainly that he does not like touching raw meat. So he found a different way, put the camera down, split the package in half and pushed it into the pan with a spatula, hands clear of it. Then he listened. No frying noise. He said he had probably been too fast, should have let it shimmer. Ten seconds later the noise came. He revised the assessment immediately: he had been a little impatient. It was like cooking on a stovetop. He said he could get used to this, and then, already mapping the next test, said he could toast his bagels in it tomorrow.
Half a package was a pound, and it did not feel like enough meat. He considered dumping the whole package in, decided against it — he wanted burgers — and resolved the shortfall in the direction chili always allows: hopefully I have lots of beans, we'll just make it mostly beans. He loves chili. He does not have to have a lot of meat. The browning came out well; he emptied the grease, shut the unit off, and consulted the AI again for the next step, which turned out to be easy. Mix everything together. He added mushrooms of his own accord, poured in V8 — sometimes tomato sauce, sometimes juice, sometimes plain, sometimes spicy, that is what he likes about chili, how creative you can be — and then reached for the spice array with no method at all. No rules about spices. Put them in there, make them look pretty, use the different colors. The last one triggered a sneezing fit. The spices went in.
Then the lid question. He assumed he closed the one already there and set it to slow cook, and the appliance wanted the other lid, and he had thought the other lid was for something else. He worked it out, called it truly awesome, discovered he was supposed to keep the vent open, squinted at text he could barely read, and asked the unit why it had a timer at all. He set it for an hour so he could stir, planning another hour after that, three hours on high total, venting. Everything as far as he could tell was right.
And then the number that closed the ledger. He checked the draw again: 1.3 watts. He said it out loud and ran the arithmetic in real time — four hours of cooking, roughly five watt-hours, against roughly six thousand stored. Even the sauté function had only pulled a hundred and fifty. He called it incredible, called it amazing, said he was very glad he had the thing and that it was going to save him. He would use it for everything, as long as Bailey did not jump up there. The chili would take care of itself now. He said he was going to sit and read a book — Game of Thrones — and the appliance hummed at one point three watts on the counter of a rig that was pretty level, but not quite.