About two hours after I came back to Cinnamon Ridge, greeted at the door by rapturous dogs and (separately) delighted kitties, Julia arrived lugging a suitcase and a laptop. She’d had to pickup her grandson after school and deliver him to his mother in Bend and got here as soon as she could. With her, she brought, by prearrangement, a container of homemade turkey stock she’d cooked up after Thanksgiving. We decided we would make homemade chicken soup. Both of us are soup lovers, and we scoured my cookbooks to find a recipe that (a) we had all of the ingredients for, and (b) that I could eat on my strict diet. We found a chicken vegetable soup that looked delicious. I located chicken in the freezer while Julia, supervised closely by my Aussies who were hoping she would reach for the dog treats jar, rummaged in the wine room/pantry combination for the rest of the goodies. She turned up a package of brown and wild rice. The catch was, it had to cook for 45 minutes before it could be added to the soup. Our stomachs were making distressed noises, and we didn’t want to wait that long, since after that the soup would need to cook for another 30 minutes or so. Out came my trusty pressure cooker. A quick search of the instruction book gleaned the information that I could cut the rice cooking time by more than half. I popped the rice in the pot, put in the required amount of water, plunked the pot into the pressure cooker, and seized the lid. The pressure cooker is one of the mainstays of my kitchen and I’ve used it hundreds of times without difficulty. I didn’t anticipate that this evening’s session would be any different. Right? Wrong. I put the lid on the pressure cooker and gave it the usual twist, anticipating that it would obediently drop into place and I would hear the little “click” that meant the lid was locked. Instead the lid skittered sideways and ended up lopsided, with one side lower than the other. Definitely not locked. Not even shut. Well, anyone can make a mistake. I tried again. And again. And again. I stopped counting, gave the pressure cooker a dirty look, and concentrated fiercely. Still no luck. By this time, Julia, who was measuring out seasonings, had stopped what she was doing and was watching me. I took a deep breath, tried once more, set the lid down, and announced, “Okay. Time to count to ten and walk away for a few minutes.” Determining the problem and obviously thinking she could solve this problem quickly, Julia picked up the lid and gave it a try. To condense, she gave it a number of tries before repeating my cycle of counting to ten and walking away. We exchanged looks and each of us knew the other was harboring uncomplimentary things about that smug appliance. We also had a few thoughts on two women versus one inanimate pressure cooker lid, with the lid the unquestionable victor. I upended the lid and examined it. Nothing unusual. Had I inadvertently used the rice cooker pot instead of the pressure cooker pot? I checked. No, I had the right pot. About this time we both heard a chirp. My canary’s cage was covered and he never makes a peep after that happens. I wondered aloud if I had a smoke alarm going out. Julia volunteered to search while I chopped vegetables, and she disappeared down the hall in the direction of my office, the guest bedroom, and the utility room. The audible chirping continued at odd but close intervals. Julia would stand under the smoke alarm in the hall when she would hear a chirp that sounded like it was coming from the guest room. If she went in there, she would hear a chirp that seemed to come from the utility room – where there was NO smoke alarm. She ended up running a shuttle service between three different locations, and every time the chirp would come from somewhere else. I finished chopping the vegetables, dumped them in the pressure cooker with the chicken and rice and the stock, and decided to make one more try before I transferred the whole thing to a regular pot to cook on the stove. The lid locked immediately. I was so surprised that I stopped in mid-stride as I turned away. I swung around and gawked at the appliance. Deciding to act before it again changed its mind, I immediately punched in the time. Whew! So I headed down to see if I could help determine the location of the chirps. I didn’t get that far. When I was crossing the open space connecting the living room, the kitchen/great room and the door to Sid’s study, music started coming from the study. Huh? The system was not and never had been programmed in any way. If we wanted music it was necessary to go in there and turn the system on and then select what we wanted. Julia came to join me. We stared at the open door to the study. Then we stared down the hall. The chirping had stopped – the instant the music had started. Less then a minute later, while we were both standing there wide-eyed, the music switched off. We sat down at the kitchen counter and debated these developments. A little later it occurred to me that the pressure cooker should have been dinging to indicate that the soup was ready. I checked it. The pressure cooker was locked…but not on. I hit the start button and stood guard until I saw the timer start ticking down the minutes. We did finally get our soup! But I kept glancing down the hall toward the suspicious smoke alarms and at the door of the stud, and more than once I caught Julia doing the same thing.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:36:34 +0000
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