While writing in my most recent blog entry about the freezer back home on the family farm, I mentioned the pressure canner. And that got me reminiscing about it, because it was a honking huge fixture of my childhood. Most things that were large when I was a child shrank when I got grown, things like candy bars and Girl Scout thin mints. But that dang pressure canner is just as big and imposing and scary as ever.
I’d mentioned it being a cross of Tin Man and Frankenstein’s Monster. But it’s more like Frankenstein’s Monster and Iron Giant. Sorry I don’t have a picture of it to post. Next time I’m in Tennessee, I promise to photograph it in all its gartantuan, dull metallic glory. For now, this drawing* will have to do:
*I don’t have the deluxe 64-color crayon set, so a combination of brown, navy and black are having to substitute for gray.
Great drawing of a real live pressure cooker. The black handles with the metal clasp must be turned to the back. Once when your "Uncle Finis" (least likely person to venture into a kitchen for any reason) was home recuperating, Mother ran an errand and left the pressure cooker on the stove. The hissing noise or is latent curiosity cause him to shuffle into the kitchen and open the clasp. The explosion was cataclysmic. Somehow he managed to clean up the mess, reseal it, put he put the clasp on top and never found the round release valve. I remember Mother trying to get me to confess that I had been in the kitchen bothering the pressure cooker against her strict orders. In the middle of our fight we heard a loud voice from the study, "I did it!" A very long incredulous silence ensued.