A Tale of Two Adventures in Domesticity

It was the best of time, it was the worst of time . . . . Oh, wait. Wrong beginning. This Christmas season, I have had two polar opposite cooking experiences. I like the call the first one "The Tale of the Three Meat Thermometers." Perhaps not the catchiest title in the world, but it's descriptive.

The Tale of the Three Meat Thermometers
On the day after Christmas, we celebrated with a big Christmas dinner. I started up the turkey, like I do every major holiday. Now, I usually do a pretty good job with turkey - the white meat comes out moist and everything. After the requisite four hours of cooking, the meat thermometer hadn't moved a bit. I decided it was probably broken. Mr. Math Teacher had a meat thermometer on the grill, so he chopped it out of the snow and cleaned it up so I could use it. After another 30 minutes, the temperature was only 140 (was supposed to be 18). I had asked Mr. Math Teacher to go to the store and told him not to wait for the turkey since it was clearly not close to done. At the store, he picked up a new meat thermometer for me. By now, I was starting to suspect that there was a problem with thermometer #2. So, I put in thermometer #3 to find that the meat temperature was actually above 190. I made lots of gravy. I have no idea how moist the white meat is because we just all put tons of gravy over it.

The Tale of the Cool New Pressure Cooker
The next night, I decided to try out my new pressure cooker from my parents. We had some venison stew meat that we expected to have to cook for a couple of hours, so I decided to try a venison and barley soup. I browned the venison right in the pot - part of why this is such a cool toy! Then, I added some onion soup mix, beef bouillon, spices, and barley. After the 15 minutes that I tried at first, the meat was good, but the barley wasn't ready. After another 15 minutes, the meat was wonderful, but the barley was a little chewy (it's not pearled barley). After only 10 more minutes, the dish was ready. Wild Man looked at it with some trepidation, but consented to try it. He pronounced it "delicious"! And there was only one pot to cook. A happy family and minimal clean-up. Does it get any better than this?!