Yet another gadget arrived in the mail yesterday, quite unexpectedly. We’d ordered it with credit card points and expected to wait a full two weeks but got it in far less time. The newest toy is an  electric pressure cooker, which I’ve wanted for quite a long time. I almost bought one a year or so ago but kept putting it off due to the high cost.

First on my list of foods to cook was chickpeas (garbanzo beans). I’ve had no luck at all cooking them on the stove, with them always coming out crunchy no matter how much soaking  and cooking. I used dried chickpeas and it took all of forty minutes once it had reached full pressure. Not a crunchy chickpea was to be found. In fact, I probably could cook them for slightly less time as they were pretty soft. I plan to try other legumes in the near future.
Today I made a spur of the moment decision to cook dinner in the pressure cooker. We were having chicken and potatoes and I made estimates on times based on a library book I found and the manual. All came out well and again, I probably could have cooked for less time. It was quite neat to have everything cook so well. I’m looking forward to cooking all sorts of meals, especially stews, in the future.

The next task is to find space for all these kitchen gadgets. We don’t really have a lot of storage space so I plan to rearrange cupboards a bit to allow more space for them.