True story. When I was a kid, we used to go to my grandmother's house after church every Sunday for dinner. My grandmother was a great cook and she knew how to catch, dispatch, pluck, butcher and fry a chicken. Unfortunately, after watching that process, I didn't eat chicken for a long time, but that's another story. If we didn't have fried chicken for Sunday dinner, we had pot roast. Delicious, tender, savory pot roast. With any meal, she always had a big pot of  slow-cooked green beans, which took hours to get to the perfect state of, well, mush!

Grandma made her pot roast in an old-fashioned pressure cooker that would steam, clang, rattle, whistle, and shake its way through the cooking process. My sister and I were scared to death of it. We would slip into the kitchen through the back porch door, as far away from the stove as possible, and help set the table, all the while eyeballing that noisy thing,

Grandma had a wicked sense of humor, bless her heart. One Sunday, when the pressure cooking was done and it was time to cool the thing down, she decided to have some fun with us. The old time pressure cookers had to be placed under cold, running water to depressurize them.  My sister and I always made sure we were nowhere near the kitchen during this process but we could hear the noise it made when it happened. On this day, my grandmother didn't warn us that it was ready. She took the thing to the sink, started the water, and it hissed like Satan's snakes while clouds of hellfire steam rose up covering her in a fog. Then the devil got the better of her and she yelled "Oooooh, it's going to blow up!" and ran into the dining room.

Now I always thought my sister was on my side. You know, she was supposed to look out for me and keep me safe. My big sister, my only sibling.  The one I looked up to, my protector.  Surely she would save me from this life-threatening situation.

I was wrong. She flat out pushed me in front of her, ran screaming out the back porch door, hollering "it's gonna blow." I was so stunned and horrified, I just stood there stupidly, staring wide-eyed at the sizzling, steaming, metal missile in the sink, thinking that I should have listened harder in Sunday School that morning because I was fixing to meet Jesus. Now, four things happened all at once; My hearing went dim; I started humming "Jesus Loves Me;" I mumbled the only prayer I could think of  which was "God is good, God is great, Let us thank him for our food," and right then and there...I wet myself. Right through my ruffled Sunday-best panties and into my lacy white socks and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes and it flowed on like the river Jordan down to the green and white linoleum floor. An epic episode of crying soon followed.

Fast forward fifty something years and this "new" thing called an Instant Pot is all the rage. My friends had it and I heard how fast it was, how it also worked like a slow cooker, how it made perfect rice. Instant Pot this and Instant Pot that. Well, I just had to have one too, so I looked them up online and saw those terrifying words bringing back childhood nightmares -

"Pressure Cooker"

AW, HELL NAW!

Ha!  I did continue to read all about the Instant Pot and paid special attention to the part about the "10 Safety Mechanisms" before I decided to pull the trigger on buying one. They really are "goof-proof" and I have no fear of them blowing up. I freaking LOVE my Instant Pot. I'm working on adding all of my Instant Pot keto-friendly recipes to my blog and will share them with you as soon as I get them. In the meantime, check out my recipes for Green Beans, (not mushy!) and Pot Roast.