Boiling water 101

C****** has been coming by Tuesday evenings & getting some cooking insights.  I will wait while you all stop laughing because yes I would agree I am not the best person to teach anyone how to cook.  Not that I am a bad cook, more that I am a spot cook.  I am prepared to prepare some foods & not others & there are large gaps in basic knowledge (I learned what Crisco was when I was in my 40s; I deep fry NOTHING & make crusts with real butter) while I have worked at areas most other cooks avoid (a souffle rising has more to do with whether or not your bowls, utensils etc. have hard water stains than how well you whip those eggs, trust me).

But none of that mattered last night, because tonight it was pressure cooker basics.  & what could be more basic than boiling water?

Sooooo,  first we boiled water with a regular (not pressurized lid).  Then we boiled black eyed peas with the pressure cooker sealed.  For whatever reason, the cooker WAS under pressure but did not give the signs the manual said it would (we knew this though because we knew how long it would take to boil that water..see how that works?) & when we opened the cooker (after doing all the groovy safety stuff) we found that ten minutes had brought us roughly where soaking for 10+ hours had done.  Did I mention I soaked black-eyed peas for comparison?

We re-pressurized for another ten minutes & had black eyed peas mush (YAY).  Also, this time the signs of pressurization were there.  I found this with my own pressure cooker the first time I used it; it just didn't tick or steam like it was supposed to that first time.

Then we took the whole thing apart, cleaning as per the directions & C***** went home with a bag of garbanzo beans to repeat on her own stove.  Next week, an actual food; this week the black eyed peas will go to the chickens.

I am not dead!

That's right, I am not dead.  But my laptop is.  Hopefully I will be back on-line sooner rather than later (A is very willing to buy a new laptop but I think I might want an iPad-y type thing instead, as we do have a home computer it is just not super convenient to use).

In better news, the photo uploading problem with same inconvenient computer seems to be resolved.