Under Pressure
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A household in France cannot survive without a pressure cooker, and thus I learned to use this handy item when I lived there. I purchased my six-quart pressure cooker some time before we set sail from France and for our 10 years onboard, it was a workhorse. It was even an excellent safety device, cooking whole meals encapsulated and enclosed in its own secure space as it rocked on the gimbaled stove while we sailed along. On the boat, it was also my yogurt maker, canning device, and sometimes a bread oven as well. This, too, would surrender to salt water damage during those 10 years on the seas; I had to replace the rubber lid gasket and the pressure relief gauge several times. But since our arrival in California in 1990, it still has prepared many a winter stew and soup for our family of four.
