Exploding beans and asswhippings
I don’t know how many of you may have seen the Mythbusters episode about exploding beans, but it brought back memories for me.
Not memories of an epic asswhipping- sure, there was an asswhipping involved, but it wasn’t a world class asswhipping, it was sort of a lackadaisical thing. Ho, hum, i can’t sit down, yay, what’s for supper, I’ll just eat standing here in a corner.
I had arrived at an age where I helped cook the evening meal fairly often, and I was no stranger to using the stove. We had a big stainless Hardwicke cooktop, gas, with those grates that looked like giant ninja stars. (if mom only knew how many times those things had been off the stove, and embedded in rotten logs in the backyard!!)
Anyway, I knew Mom had ordered some ribs from the little restaurant that was on her way home, and I though, shit, what goes better with ribs than baked beans? I knew there was a can in the pantry, so i went down and got them.
I was about to crank them open when I thought to myself, damn, the can is metal, right? And when Mom cooks stuff i the pressure cooker it gets done faster, right? heat + pressure = great tasting food!!
Good Lord, I am a friggin’ GENIUS!!!
I’m gonna put the can RIGHT on the stove, it’ll cook up great, and we won’t dirty a pot, and it’ll be WONDERFUL! Whyinhell hasn’t anyone else ever thought of this? hell, I already had a set of Dad’s welding gloves ready to hold the can and open it.
So I set it on the stove, and put it on “high” There was an anxious moment as the paper label burned off the can, but it was soon gone.
I heard Mom pulling into the garage and realized I was still wearing my PJ’s. This was a capitol offense; we were not allowed to ‘Lounge around” all day, we had to get dressed- even though we werent’ allowed to go outdoors. So I ran into my roomto change before she got up the stairs.
Thenkfully, something else happened before she got up the stairs. She was on the landing, in fact, when the can went “BOOM!”
Sure, an asswhipping ensued. But the cleaning was the worst bit, I spent most of that evening cleaning and it was a mess. Years afterward, each time there was a remodeling project, we’d find a couple beans we’d missed, like stuck to the wallpaper in a place where the pattern hid it, or on the top of one of the blades of the ceiling fan, or behind the cabinets. The asswhipping wasn’t half as memorable as the lesson learned, nor the cleaning of the baked beans.
Man, you have an epic life.
I did the can of beans thing once camping, althouhg being older, I new to crack the can first.
Beans where not bad, but the wife does not want to go camping to this day.
You keep insisting that I’m smarter than you are.
If you keep telling stories like this, you might just convince me.
LOL
That is too funny!! I like the part about finding the remains years later. But hey, you were thinking ahead since you knew the can would be hot.
Thanks for the morning laugh.
I should tell you the one about my Mom and the chocolate pie she was cooking when I was a kid.
When the first microwaves came out that I could afford (about $500), I got one, and since I love hard-boiled eggs, wondered why everyone said it was impossible to cook an egg in the shell in the micro.
Yeah, I knew about the membrane and how strong it was, would make a huge pressure-vessel of the egg, etc, but I reasoned that if I never let the magnetron stay on for more than 7 seconds, I would be OK. I was going to do 60 seconds, and had done 6 of the 7-second bursts with no problem, so I fired it for the seventh time, and BOOM! The egg was reduced to DUST, it blew the door open, and lightning resulted in the magnetron compartment.
About a 2-hour job to clean up the micro, which, at that time, could be disassembled to do that.
I was SOOOO close….
When I was a kid, I used to marvel at the big brown stain on the ceiling in the grandmother’s kitchen. Story went that a pressure cooker full of beans was uncapped without relieving pressure first.
Not baked beans, but as a kid I remember putting the wrong lid on a saucepan of potatoes we were boiling up for dinner. The starchy water boiled up enough to seal the lid into the slightly oversize pot. Fortunately, we were all out of the kitchen when it blew the lid off, since mashed potatoes wound up everywhere! The double circle of the lid handle and rim were still visible in the ceiling 10 years later when we moved. My parents did help with that cleanup, since mom told me the lid would be ok!