sometimes life's a pressure cooker...

... and sometimes the gasket blows.

Life and times twist, lock
and bring the soul to boiling.
Safety valve pops. Tears.

I actually had to look up on Wikipedia to be sure how a pressure cooker works.  I inherited TWO heavy steel pressure cooker bottoms from my mom.They say "Maid of Honor" on their sturdy bottoms.  Their twist-to-lock lids are long gone, and I have only hazy memories of ever seeing the pans used as pressure cookers.  I'm not sure why I have two, but I was glad to be able to take one with me for my years away from the family home. 

First my mom, and now I, use these heavy pots  for making "English Toffee," a family tooth-wrecking favorite that was not recognized as particularly English by the Brit for whom I once proudly made a batch.

The recipe, which I attribute to my mom, is also in the good ol' reliable Betty Crocker red cookbook.  She always made toffee in the heavy steel pressure cooker bottom because it kept the brown sugar and butter from burning, although part of the "art" is the enthusiastic stirring required until the mixture reaches the hard crack stage. (She and I used to feel and smell when it was ready -- I resort to a candy thermometer these days.) When the butter & preferably DARK brown sugar reach their correct temperature, the mixture is spread over chopped pecans, then topped with semi-sweet chocolate chips. The 9x13 pan is covered with one of the rarely-flat cookie sheets I own until the chips melt. The softened chocolate is spread like frosting, and the whole shebang is left to firm up.

Not something to be cut neatly, the candy cracks, and it might as well be cocaine. I could eat a whole batch myself. And for better or worse, sometimes when life's pressure builds up, the pressure cooker comes out, and the safety release is sugar, butter and chocolate.

Never could duplicate mom's sugary chocolate fudge, though. Sometimes it was perfect. Sometimes it could have been used as road patch.  (But that didn't stop me from gnawing away on it.)

Fortunately for my blood sugar, it's bedtime, I have a good detective novel... and I had a couple of good people in my life who were willing to listen and be with me as I cried off some pressure today.  And that's even better than toffee.