Grandmas pressure cooker
When I was a kid, my family never considered itself poor. We always had some kind of clothes to wear, and we never went to bed hungry. My mother had 5 brothers and sisters, and consequently I had about three thousand cousins all close to my age. Every Sunday, we would all gather at Grandma and Grandpas little house for Sunday dinner.
Now as I said, we never considered ourselves poor, but that didnt stop us from dragging the odd thing home from the local dump, after a garbage run, that looked like it might still have some life in it.
This was about 1952, and the real Must Have cooking item that year was a pressure cooker---Why, you could put the toughest, scrawniest, old rooster into a pressure cooker, and after about 4 hours at 250 PSI it would be tender as a young chicken.Only thing was, nobody in our family could afford to buy one.
My uncle made a dump run one Saturday, and there in the dump was an almost new pressure cooker. (These wear a big heavy aluminum pot about 16 in diameter and 16 high with a heavy lid which dogged down into place with clamps big enough to use on the watertight bulkheads in a submarine). The only thing missing was some little valve thingy on the lid, that had broken off.
My uncle quickly grabbed the pot and the lid and dragged it home to grandma. Now my uncle was a very handy sort of fellow, so before he gave the pot to Grandma, he whittled a nice hickory plug and pounded it into the hole where that little valve thingy had broken off.
Now Grandma, who was even poorer than the rest of us, (grandpa was too old to do much real work by then, and the government pension wouldnt buy much beyond a sack of potatoes and 2 plugs of Redman chewing tobacco)---she was ecstatic, to have an almost new pressure cooker.
Come Sunday morning she sent grandpa down to the chicken coupe with an axe to dispatch the toughest, oldest, meanest rooster and get him ready for the pot.
She plucked said rooster, and into the pot he went with some water and some salt and whatever else you use to cook a chicken (Hey, Im an engineer darn it, not a cook!!!) and set it on the back of the woodstove to simmer all day.
About 3:00 in the afternoon all the various aunts and uncles and cousins rolled into Grandmas little house, and the aunts were all proudly shown the New pressure cooker. They admired it, and even aknowledged what a clever fellow my uncle was to whittle a good plug that didnt leak any for that little part that had broken off the top of the lid.
Everybody was crowded into the little parlor, gossiping and yacking as familes at grandmas always do, and smelling the great smell of chicken cooking---by that time a bit of chicken laden steam was escaping around the edges of the lid.)
As the visiting went on, and the smell of cooking chicken and dumplings got even better, somebody looked out into the old summer kitchen and noticed that there seemed to be an awfull lot of steam coming out from around the edges of the lid on that pressure cooker, and that it (The pressure cooker) seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and was starting to jig around a bit on the top of the stove.
This was a bit alarming, so my uncle who had brought home the cooker was elected to go into the summer kitchen and shove the new cooker to the back of the stove, off the heat.
He made it as far as the archway going into the summer kitchen, when she BLEW!!! There was a deafening roar, the clang of a 16 aluminum lid ricoshetting around the kitchen, and a massive cloud of chicken laden steam swept out of the summer kitchen into the parlor.
Women were screaming, kids were bawling, and my uncle came flying out of the kitchen covered in hot water and chicken goo.
Everybody ran outside the little house, and when things calmed down a bit, and all the mothers done head counts of all the children, my poor uncle who was terrified (and only scalded a little bit) was sent back into the house to see what had happened.
Then we heard the laughter start from inside the house. We all looked at each other, thinking perhaps that the explosion had addled my uncles brains. He began shouting Come in here---You gotta see this!!!
So---We all filed cautiously back into the house, through the remnants of chicken flavoured steam,---and---There on the ceiling of the summer kitchen was our Sunday dinner!!!
SPLAT!!!----there was that poor old rooster, totally embossed into the ceiling, dumplings and all.
That little thing that had been broken off the lid was the SAFETY VALVE!!! When my uncle whittled the hardwood plug, he had unknowingly created a BOMB!!!
Needless to say, that is one Sunday dinner that I will always remember, even though it happened more than 50 years ago.---Brian
When I was a kid, my family never considered itself poor. We always had some kind of clothes to wear, and we never went to bed hungry. My mother had 5 brothers and sisters, and consequently I had about three thousand cousins all close to my age. Every Sunday, we would all gather at Grandma and Grandpas little house for Sunday dinner.
Now as I said, we never considered ourselves poor, but that didnt stop us from dragging the odd thing home from the local dump, after a garbage run, that looked like it might still have some life in it.
This was about 1952, and the real Must Have cooking item that year was a pressure cooker---Why, you could put the toughest, scrawniest, old rooster into a pressure cooker, and after about 4 hours at 250 PSI it would be tender as a young chicken.Only thing was, nobody in our family could afford to buy one.
My uncle made a dump run one Saturday, and there in the dump was an almost new pressure cooker. (These wear a big heavy aluminum pot about 16 in diameter and 16 high with a heavy lid which dogged down into place with clamps big enough to use on the watertight bulkheads in a submarine). The only thing missing was some little valve thingy on the lid, that had broken off.
My uncle quickly grabbed the pot and the lid and dragged it home to grandma. Now my uncle was a very handy sort of fellow, so before he gave the pot to Grandma, he whittled a nice hickory plug and pounded it into the hole where that little valve thingy had broken off.
Now Grandma, who was even poorer than the rest of us, (grandpa was too old to do much real work by then, and the government pension wouldnt buy much beyond a sack of potatoes and 2 plugs of Redman chewing tobacco)---she was ecstatic, to have an almost new pressure cooker.
Come Sunday morning she sent grandpa down to the chicken coupe with an axe to dispatch the toughest, oldest, meanest rooster and get him ready for the pot.
She plucked said rooster, and into the pot he went with some water and some salt and whatever else you use to cook a chicken (Hey, Im an engineer darn it, not a cook!!!) and set it on the back of the woodstove to simmer all day.
About 3:00 in the afternoon all the various aunts and uncles and cousins rolled into Grandmas little house, and the aunts were all proudly shown the New pressure cooker. They admired it, and even aknowledged what a clever fellow my uncle was to whittle a good plug that didnt leak any for that little part that had broken off the top of the lid.
Everybody was crowded into the little parlor, gossiping and yacking as familes at grandmas always do, and smelling the great smell of chicken cooking---by that time a bit of chicken laden steam was escaping around the edges of the lid.)
As the visiting went on, and the smell of cooking chicken and dumplings got even better, somebody looked out into the old summer kitchen and noticed that there seemed to be an awfull lot of steam coming out from around the edges of the lid on that pressure cooker, and that it (The pressure cooker) seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and was starting to jig around a bit on the top of the stove.
This was a bit alarming, so my uncle who had brought home the cooker was elected to go into the summer kitchen and shove the new cooker to the back of the stove, off the heat.
He made it as far as the archway going into the summer kitchen, when she BLEW!!! There was a deafening roar, the clang of a 16 aluminum lid ricoshetting around the kitchen, and a massive cloud of chicken laden steam swept out of the summer kitchen into the parlor.
Women were screaming, kids were bawling, and my uncle came flying out of the kitchen covered in hot water and chicken goo.
Everybody ran outside the little house, and when things calmed down a bit, and all the mothers done head counts of all the children, my poor uncle who was terrified (and only scalded a little bit) was sent back into the house to see what had happened.
Then we heard the laughter start from inside the house. We all looked at each other, thinking perhaps that the explosion had addled my uncles brains. He began shouting Come in here---You gotta see this!!!
So---We all filed cautiously back into the house, through the remnants of chicken flavoured steam,---and---There on the ceiling of the summer kitchen was our Sunday dinner!!!
SPLAT!!!----there was that poor old rooster, totally embossed into the ceiling, dumplings and all.
That little thing that had been broken off the lid was the SAFETY VALVE!!! When my uncle whittled the hardwood plug, he had unknowingly created a BOMB!!!
Needless to say, that is one Sunday dinner that I will always remember, even though it happened more than 50 years ago.---Brian
