Of Tile and Exploding Pressure Cookers

It's been six days since I wrote here. Bad girl! I'm just having trouble finding subject matter in a hum-drum everyday world. You can only post so many menus and tell so many grandkids stories. For the most part that's my world right now.

I have had a bit of a hoop-la trying to locate an adequate number of the tile I selected for the master bathroom. Remember the bathroom project from before Thanksgiving? Well, we've lived with that ugly situation long enough. I finally - just today - resolved the problem of getting the exact tile I want. Monday I'll call and schedule the workers to come and put us back in good order. I hope they'll be available soon.

I promised one of my best blogging friends that I'd write about having a pressure cooker explode. So here goes. This happened years ago when my boys were five and seven. I used my pressure cooker at least once a week - maybe more - so I wasn't the least bit afraid of something going wrong. Well, this particular day I was making chicken and dumplings. As was my usual habit, I cooked the chicken in the pressure cooker, took it out, pulled the meat from the bones, and put the meat back in the cooker with the broth. Then I made the dumplings .

All this time the boys and a couple of their little friends were playing on the deck just outside the kitchen. From time to time one would open the door and asked, "Are they ready yet?" I was tired and wanting to finish cooking so the kids could eat and settle down.

Well, I put the dumplings in the hot broth, set the lid back on the cooker - I didn't lock it down - and set the heat on low. I went out to the deck to watch the children and rest my tired feet and legs for a few minutes. Next thing I knew there was a loud noise in the kitchen. I jumped up and started back through the door. As soon as my feet hit the kitchen floor I was skating and ended up sitting on a floor covered with dumplings, chicken, and gravy. The lid on the cooker was heavy enough to cause a certain amount of pressure to build up. Gravy spewed out through the steam valve and the lid blew off.

Before I could get up one of the kids stuck his head in and asked, "Are we ready to eat?" Those kids were laughing and jumping around. They thought it was a real funny show. I told them to stay on the deck while I cleaned up. What a mess! I was busy trying to salvage some of the stuff from the pan and looked around to see one of the neighbor kids eating a hot dumpling that he'd picked up from the floor. It was a nightmare.

Have you ever seen gravy drip from the ceiling onto the floor and run down the front of your cabinets? I truly hope not. Service Master came and cleaned the grease and smoke from everything. Can you believe our home owner's policy paid for the damage?

Have I ever used a pressure cooker again? Nope!!! If you do, beware the exploding steam vent.