Kitchen Explosives

For those of you who will most likely read this blog, you are probably already aware that I come from a large family. A family of 12, to be exact. 10 kids, 2 parents. As the oldest child, I was frequently responsible for cooking meals. Because of that, I have an inbred inability to make small quantities of food. When I make food, I make a lot. There is just one small problem with this. I am not a fan of leftovers. Anyway, for mother's day this past year, I was given a pressure cooker. (Yes, very sentimental, I know.) I actually had been wanting one for quite a while, domestic goddess that I am. Today for the first time, I pressure canned some soup I had made, hoping to find a way to avoid eating this soup for the next two weeks. I set my first jar in the canner, only to have it shatter. Hmmm....not off to a good start. Canners, in my mind, are quirky little things. It feels like any minute they will explode. A kitchen time bomb waiting to go off. This shattered jar did not increase my faith in pressure cookers, espcially since I had followed the instructions in my manual to a "T." Anyway, I decided to make up my own instructions, and my other two jars remained intact. I will become master of my pressure cooker yet!