One of those days.

No Uni today, as it is Easter break. Carefully timed not to be the same two weeks as the little guys' Easter break, but that's another story.

Today I had two essential  tasks, before getting down to Uni work: make some soup for lunch, and make some cakes.

I put all the soup ingredients into the electric pressure cooker - easy - started it, and started the cakes. Not a difficult recipe, but with several different steps, and needing to get the timing right.

In the middle of reducing the Guiness, melting the chocolate and butter,  and whisking the eggs and sugar, I realise that all is not well with the pressure cooker. Instead of automatically turning the heat down when it gets to the right pressure, cooking the soup for 20 minutes, then turning itself off, it is hissing like an angry cat, the lid isn't on properly, and the kitchen is full of steam.

The cake mixture is at a crucial stage, so I just turn off the pressure cooker and return to the cake making. 

In the middle of adding the hot butter and sugar, very carefully as advised by Ms Monroe, the buzzer on my washing machine goes off. This is only to tell me that it's finished, but it's annoying so I have to turn it off.

When I've got the brownies in the oven, and tidied the kitchen,  I return to the pressure cooker. I try to refit the lid but realise the the safety button has lifted and it's not going to work. Normally at this stage I'd have shoved the soup in a pan and finished it on the hob, but it is white bean soup, so needs long cooking, and I need it for lunch. So I get down the old manual pressure cooker which I haven't used since I bought the electric one. Unfortunately I haven't cleaned it in that time either, so it needs washing before I can use it.

The sink is full of the detritus from cake making, soaking to get all the chocolate off. 

Eventually I get the pressure cooker clean, decant the soup into it, put it on the hob - and realise that I can't remember how to use it. Nor can I find the manual. 

I did get it sorted eventually, and hopefully by the time I've written this we'll have some bean and tomato soup to enjoy - the brownies are for someone else.

But that is why I am now enjoying the left over Guiness, and may well open another can.