Schwelmo's Welt

I should admit that I am not a woman. That means three things:

I am more hairy. I can’t get pregnant. I can’t do two things at once.

Today I tried the latter. I need to write my stupid thesis. So I stayed home to write as I had to eat I decided to cook something as well. A thought a chickpea curry would be nice. And my new place has a pressure cooker. Beautiful, I thought. I can cook the chickpeas in there and they should be ready in 30 min for further use. I filled 4 cups dried chickpeas into the pressure cooker and added sufficient water. When I looked at the lid it said something like “before use refer to the manual”. At least I think, because it was in French. The language of love and something I do not speak. “Ah, fuck it. I used a pot before. And anyway stupid French.”

I closed the lid, turned on the heat and went back to writing. And lost track of time (can you believe that , I was writing). I smelled something burned after a while. I ignored it but jumped started into the kitchen 2 minutes later where I was greeted by a black/brownish liquid coming out of the ventil. “Wow, I created oil out of chickpeas! I a gonna be rich!” Then I remembered: oil is out of animal sediment (is driving a car vegan?). Plants make coal. And that what I found later in the bottom of the pot.

I am sure the manual would have said “reduce the heat when water is cooking”. Well, enough water was still in there as it kept coming out brown, smelly and sticky. I took the pot outside to release the pressure (took 5 min). The next 2h I spend cleaning and sorted out the burned from the non-burned chickpeas. I had toast for tea…

If somebody wants to know, burned chickpeas in a pressure cooker taste like roasted chestnuts. But I would not recommend repeating that experiment. Buying chestnuts directly is probably much cheaper than a pressure cooker.

If you in Wellington/or Palmy...and have spare time...

go and see the play Antigone's death.