And just like the failed, worn-out slogan of 2008, so goes the story of last Saturday.

I finally got around to using my pressure cooker, or as I began to consider it, my “pressurized canister of potential death, dismemberment and/or disfiguration normally reserved for the preservation of foodstuffs.”

I cooked a huge, 6-quart batch of chicken tortilla soup, and all I got out of it were four, seemingly extra large quarts of soup.  This is what I get for buying off-brand.  I’m going to spend the extra $1.50 next time and get Mason jars.  These jars were like quart jars with giantism.  They weren’t really the next size up, but they weren’t quite quarts either.  They were quarts after a nice, big Thanksgiving dinner.

Big-arsed "quart" jars beside hulking pressure cooker

The big black pot in the back, normally reserved for water bath canning, was used to boil 4 quarts of water to fill the bottom of the pressure canner. Four quarts of water is a lot, it’s 16 cups. That’s a LOT of water. Here’s a picture of my soup jars in that massive amount of water. HA HA HA HA HA HA.

It covered their toes. This pressure cooker is HUGANTIC.

And then I had to figure out some geology to see how long the things had to stay at 11 psi.  Are we > 2000 ft above sea level?  I hadn’t the slightest idea.  Oh how I envied Dave’s mom, who would know for sure that she is, in fact, NOT 2000 ft above sea level, or my BFF who would know that she IS > 2000 ft above sea level because they live like 400,000 feet above sea level. I know that when I get brownies and there are special “high altitude” instructions I laugh and ignore them, but this was important, we could get botulism if I chuckled at this.  So I had to look up our altitude.  We were about 1100 ft above sea level, or maybe 800.  I couldn’t really read the graph, I had my contacts in.  But I know it was less than 2,000.  I was to set the timer for 25 minutes.  At least that was easy.

Just like working in R&D again.

 It took a considerable amount of time to get the thing going. But finally everything was a-go!

Zeros, zeros! Zeros mean so much! /TMBG

Wha? Needle? Why you no moving?!

I had apparently put something together wrong, and I didn’t realize it until the water in the cooker was already boiling. So. I had to take it apart (DEATH!) and then unscrew some stuff (BURNS!) and then rescrew it on (INSANITY!) and then let it heat up again. But finally, after – good gosh – like, and I am not kidding, four hours the pressure started to rise.  Not.  Unlike.  The.  Pressure.  Of.  My.  Blood.  (which had been going up for the last FOUR HOURS).

BOOOM!!!!! It's not an accident, it's a kitchen renovation.

…and then the pot sat there at 11 psi for 25 minutes.

oh. the. tedium.

After that you just have to wait for it to cool down before you can do anything else. Which means you can’t do anything with it until the next day. So it effectively took six hour to can four jars of soup, only three of which actually sealed properly. *sigh*