Monday, September 6, 2010

Memories of an Exploding Pressure Cooker

Today I was cooking pinto beans in my pressure cooker and I had a little too much water in it and it started coming out of the vent tube, and I mean a lot of water, enough to pool on the stove.  So off the stove into the sink with cool water.  It's Arizona folks and we do not have cold water coming out of the tap here in the summer. 

Anyway it reminded of a time my Dad was cooking lentil beans in the pressure cooker.  I was in my early teens. The pressure cooker explored and there were lentil beans all over the kitchen, the ceiling, the walls, floor and the stove.  It was a mess.  I wasn't in the kitchen when it happened but the noise made me run to see what had happened.  This was in our Florida home after we had remodeled the kitchen, dinning room and added the Florida room.

My Dad was the real cook in my house.  Mom cooked OK but not as good as my Dad did.  He was also the shift cook at the firehouse.  I can remember him making fruit cake and soaking it in some kind of liquor, wrapping it and putting it in the front coat closet until Christmas when we lived in New York.  I think he stopped making the fruit cake after we moved to Florida because there wasn't any place cool enough to store it.  He made chicken and dumplings and lots of other good dishes.  He cooked all the Holiday meals.  He made the best oil & vinegar salad dressing which I could ever duplicate.  I asked him for the recipe and he laughed, he didn't really measure.  A sign a true cook. 

I couldn't resist telling this story, and using the memory that came to my mind today.   



2 comments:

  1. How amazing to see your mention of fruitcake as I just came across our traditional recipe a few hours ago and planned to blog about it in October which was when my mother would make them for friends and family. She would pour a couple of ounces of brandy over each and wrap them to store until Christmas. We live in Florida and my mother always stored hers in the refrigerator.

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  2. I am just trying to imagine what the kitchen looked like with beans all over... The closest we got to that was exploding eggs in the microwave. My mom and I also used to do fruitcake - bake it after Thanksgiving and douse it every other day with brandy until Christmas.

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