the housewife edition - pressure cooker 101

Writing 'the housewife edition' reminds me that I have yet to post one last honeymoon edition, whoops! Anyway, I received a pressure cooker back in 2010 and I never used it. I had heard nightmares of explosions, even to Liz's own sister, and I've been afraid. So it's been sitting in the cabinet... until yesterday.

I had decided I wanted to start cooking my own dried beans and then keeping them in the freezer. I use a lot of beans and at $0.80/can they are still a cheap protein, but could be cheaper and less cans since there is no recycling in our neighborhood, plus eliminate that whatever bad stuff is in the can linings. So I asked Liz for a lesson and she agreed.

our cookers side-by-side.

So now my first explosion is under my belt...

It started when we noticed the top of my pot never started rattling (indicating pressure was reached) so we kept waiting and waiting. And when I went over to inspect it I noticed the overpressure valve was cockeyed and letting out too much steam, so I went to push it flush, but instead it pushed through in to the pot and then 250* steaming hot bean water came shooting out of that hole like Old Faithful. So I'm standing there yelling "Help! Help!" (another reason I don't want to work in the ER) to Liz, and then running for my camera, while trusty Liz turns off burners and threw something over the hole so it would stop geyesering out stuff. But we were too late.

it was all over the floor

and all over Liz's new cookbook

And later we noticed even in little cabinet crevices and on the ceiling. But, perfectly cooked beans!

So, now I feel a bit more bolstered to try again and to make sure that little valve is flush first next time.

In other housewife news, I made a better-than-last-attempt chicken biriyani last night for dinner

Doug approved.

I'm guessing my days of this

are limited. I had 3 interviews last week and I felt like 2 of them went really well. My old lawyer boss said they called for a reference and he said he gave the 'highest reference possible', that was nice. So hopefully I'll be a working RN soon!