Just Add Water? Please Don’t!

(from the archive)

Feeling the “pressure?” Nothing like a little craziness to break up the daily grind…

So I went grocery shopping last week, and I found a great deal on some pork loin. Let me tell you something, if you’ve never owned a pressure cooker, and you’ve never made a pork loin in a pressure cooker, it will be the juiciest, softest most beautiful piece of meat you will ever eat. I happen to own, or USED to own, a Wolfgang Puck pressure cooker, and I swear that other than meatloaf, that’s pretty much the only thing that I use it for.

So I go to pull out my trusty dusty pressure cooker, and it’s not where it’s supposed to be. I don’t have many places to store things, so I’m literally standing there scratching my head. Where the hell else could I possibly have put it? So I go tearing my house apart, looking everywhere, including where I absolutely would NOT have put it. My son is watching me, mumbling to myself, and he just says, “What’re you doing???” I explained to him that I’m looking for my pressure cooker, there’s only so many places it could be, and I can’t find it. So I asked him if he’s seen it? Recently? “Nope. Last time I saw it was when you came home from the cook-off at work. We were unloading the car.” He said, “Did you check out in the garage?”

Now, normally, I would just drop and go and check the garage. Except for one small problem. I don’t think that it (meaning the pressure cooker) was empty when I brought it home. “Are you sure it’s not in the house?” I asked my son. He looked at me with that look and said. “Well, you’re still looking for it…” And I just had this really really really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why?

Because this is the end of June, and that cook-off was back in the end of January. AND my garage is not an everyday use garage. It’s more like an oversized shed that we use for storage. AND and at this point, if my memory serves me correctly, that shed was open, and I left it right in the front open doors because it was open when I came home. Knowing my son, he probably saw it, thought it was clean, and closed the shed.

Now mind you, if this thing is in the shed, it has still been 85 to 90° for the last few days. With some trepidation I start making my way to the shed. And then, I smelled just a little bit of garlic outside. I started praying to God that it was my neighbor, maybe cooking something good, except his car wasn’t in his driveway. I go to open the door, and it was right there, exactly where I faintly remembered seeing it last with the lid sitting on top half cocked.

Now blinded by the sun, I go to bend down and I see a few little things come flying away from it. And once my eyes adjusted, I noticed creepy crawlies with wings walking, RUNNING all over the damn thing. Not only that, I saw a bunch of little brown things that look like dried up grains of rice on it, next to it, and under it.

Now listen, I can deal with a lot of things. I can deal with smells, I can deal with messes, but bugs? Not so much. Especially when I don’t know what the hell they are. So now at this point, I have the grim realization that there is still remnants of some kind of food inside of this thing. And it’s 6 MONTHS OLD. And now, also inside, are a bunch of live flying creepy crawly things having a field day with it. I have to step away at this point because now I quite seriously don’t know what the hell to do.

At the end of the day I start negotiating with myself, saying, “Hey, I REALLY wanted a new Instant Pot anyway. It’s supposed to be 10 times better than a pressure cooker, but I must digress. All I know at this point is that I’m terrified I’m going to move that lid and a million bugs are going to come running up my body and flying in my face, and I’ll tell you what, ain’t NOBODY got time for that! I am literally foraging, looking for a can of any kind of bug spray. I go and I hit a quick spray on the outside of said crock pot, and the ones that got sprayed immediately went belly up.

Now you would think, and I would think, that if a live bug walked through that bug spray, it would be instant death. Yeah, well guess what? It’s been that kind of day for me, and I’m watching these little bastards come out and start crawling all over and flying. I’m trying at this point not to cry like a baby or scream like a little bitch. So now I figure I’ll go get a big garbage bag, turn it upside down and put it over the top of the crock pot to lift it up. Anything that crawls or flies out will be trapped under the bag.

But then the realization hits me… If I throw it away with the bag OVER it, it is going to empty into my garbage can since it’s not IN the bag. I will be forced to deal with touching this no matter what. So, with all the nerve I could muster, I had to make a move to take the lid and screw it on the pressure cooker. The only problem is, you have to line up the white line with the white dot and turn it to lock it, which involves that little pot inside moving.

With bug spray in one hand, paper towel on the lid, if you would have seen me spraying for all I was worth and trying to get that freaking lid on the way it needed to go, it was a freaking horror show, lol! Choking to where I couldn’t breathe! It may have killed every OTHER bug that was in that shed, but it sure as hell wasn’t killing these little bastards!

So now, I have to get this thing, covered in bug spray and the still- crawling bugs on it into the garbage bag. WHICH I have already opened, stood up, braced so it couldn’t move. I all but threw the damn thing into the garbage bag and closed up that bag as quickly as I could. Heebie Jeebies, creepy crawlies, I had a HUGE case of each!

I go to look down at where the cooker was just sitting, and I see what looks like a pile of brown, dried up Rice-A-Roni.

Now here I sit wondering, they’re not moving.. Are they, or were they, dead bug pods? Are they yet to be hatched? Is this a just add water scenario? Gremlins??? Oh God, please no! Because they’re stuck to the ground, and sweeping them is not an option, so now I’m looking at a wet sponge to get them off the ground! I looked up and saw a scraper and a shovel pan, so I wasn’t about to take any chances with that water, I couldn’t have gotten them scraped off that floor and into the garbage fast enough.

So now at this point, I have to get that bad boy out to the farthest other end of the house to the garbage can at the street. My husband pulls up coming home from work, and yells, “Here I’ll take that!” I yelled out, “NOOOOOOOO!” I’m trying to explain that inside was the equivalent of a toxic waste dump, and it had to be put straight into the garbage, propped up in the corner where it couldn’t be turned over, since it wasn’t locked down all the way.

Why? Because I’d feel sorry for the poor bastard that turns that thing over for the wrath of hell that would be unleashed upon them if they tipped it over. 

But I’ll tell you what, one thing’s for sure. I will never, never never, EVER, forget to empty out a crock pot, pressure cooker OR Instant Pot, EVER again!

Not even my new one