No soup for dinner tonight

I was with Kristine and Kaelynn in the lobby watching Barney while Mom and Wife were cooking dinner. I can tell Mom is making the ABC soup as when I came home earlier, she was already taking out chopped onions from the blender. And when she makes soup, she usually uses the pressure cooker to do it.

Its a very simple solution, really. All you need to do is to add the ingredients and then close the top and start the fire. The pressure will build up inside the pot and this creates a higher cooking temperature which means we can have soup withing the shortest time. You will know the soup is ready when the pressure valve lets off excess pressure with a hissing or whistle sound.

So, while we're at the lobby, Wife came down to check on us when we heard the pressure cooker's whistle. But three seconds later, there was a loud hissing and explosion. So, my Wife ran up to the kitchen while I made sure the kids are not shocked/scarred/distressed by the event. By the time I ran up to the kitchen, my Mom was nowhere to be seen while the pressure cooker was on the kitchen floor. Some of the soup was splattered on the kitchen tiles.......

I still cannot explain how the pressure cooker happened to be on the floor. My only theory as mentioned by my wife, is that the pot jumped up and fell. How my Mom happened to be sitting on the floor, I also cannot explain. Perhaps later, when she is feeling better after a few hours of Astro, we might be able to tell the whole story. It could be worse, I guess because when I was small, my Dad did tell us the story of a pressure cooker (not ours) went wrong where the cover popped off and broke the ceiling.


Something wrong happened here. This is
a piece of the rubber gasket what is sand
wiched between the cover and the pot. It
broke off and next to it is the carrot from
the soup


One and a half hours later, I decided to
open the pot. Here, you can see broken
rubber gasket and the delicious soup
which cannot be eaten since my Wife
forbade in case there were loose metal
in there.