That’s EXACTLY why I wouldn’t want to boil eggs in a kettle! Yuckety yuck!
Ooooh, I’ve heard of those, a brand called Quooker. The thing is, though, it delivers water at 100°C, which of course, yes, is boiling point, but is it really, really boiling? REALLY boiling? What I so loved about growing up with a proper kettle on my parents’ Aga is that the water was always what we’d call ‘Aga-hot’, and cups of tea would stay hot for aaaaaages!
Gosh no, they wouldn’t - can you imagine the MESS? I’ve heard of people heating up tins of beans in kettles - taking the label off the tin first, submerging the tin in the water in the kettle and switching the kettle on (making sure they’ve made a hole in the top of the can first) but I’m not sure I’d even dare to do THAT!!!!!!!
I don't think the boiling water taps make good tea. We use water that is just off the boil, precisely 97.8 degrees. The water is drizzled over the tea leaves, and allowed to bloom and bask for 7 minutes. Milk is gently poured in and stirred anticlockwise.
I’m a coffee drinker (2-3 double espressos) before school and thereafter a constant tea drinker throughout the day (the staff room is less than 10 steps from my classroom). Without the industrial kettle … well, I shudder to think!
Wow Bryan, that’s what I’d call starting the day with a bang! 💥 Nice one for bagging the classroom closest to the staff room - I’m impressed! That would suit me, too - or a pipeline direct to a non-stop tea supply would come a close second, I guess! I’ve always got a cuppa on the go (although I don’t always drink the same thing - I have a couple of cups of decaf coffee every day, and if I feel my caffeine intake from my tea habit is getting silly I’ll grudgingly have a cup of decaf tea or peppermint tea).
Such a wonderfully funny letter today! A great way to wake me up as I drink my coffee! I drink tea all day long after 11 am.
I boil water in my kettle for pasta. But pour it into a pot on the stove. Obviously it is a quicker way to get hot water, by a few minutes anyway.
I keep eyeing my electric kettle which is showing its age and contemplating if it is time to replace it. Still working but the outside is aged and worn…kind of like me. I could replace it with a new one and I could watch the bubbles as it comes to a boil. That would be more entertaining!
Ah, Gail, what has happened to us that we are entertained by watching bubbles rise...? I often waste thirty minutes watching a handsome man get a haircut on Youtube and call it entertainment..... what a sad confession.
During the first Covid lockdown I watched a 30-minute YT video of a handsome man getting a haircut several times and then cut the hair of my OWN handsome man with added confidence!
Over four years later I have only just relinquished the task of cutting Jim’s hair every few weeks, because we’ve both finally made it back to the scissors of the professionals at the Village Hair Shop!
Get a cup of tea and give this a try. So relaxing to me. Massive makeover, really sweet, handsome men. A little addictive, I warn you…. “Regal Gentleman”
Thanks, Gail! Yes, I quite often boil water before I use it to cook something on the stove - it saves a lot of time!
I love the idea of watching the bubbles. Our kettle's got a clear side panel so you can see into the main body of it, so maybe I'll have a look at the bubbles next time! Our kettle's so new that I'm still getting distracted by the 'what's that funny little blue light in the garden?' optical illusion caused by the illuminated switch on the kettle being reflected in the kitchen door!
"In an instant I’d pledged to reduce my hourly cup of tea routine by fifty per cent..." ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, yes, like that's ever going to happen...
As far as cooking pasta in a tea kettle? Urg. Easy, yes, but why not just open a can of ready-made spaghetti and dump it in. That's really easy, if you don't mind your next cup of tea having the flavor of garlic and rosemary.... A clean-up nightmare. Great post, Rebecca!
Ha! You’ve probably already guessed that I had edited my draft of this post to change ‘30 minutes’ to ‘an hour’ in the first place….. so yup, in reality I am pretending to have QUARTERED my tea consumption when in fact I seem to be struggling to achieve anything like it! 🤣 LOL!
LOL to the clean-up nightmare - although I HAVE heard of people heating up tins of beans in the kettle, albeit by lowering the entire tin (once the top has been pierced to minimise risk of explosion) into the kettle and switching it off. Bit too risky for me - oh, and I don’t really eat baked beans. I mean heck, if I were that desperate for something to eat and had a tin of beans and a kettle available, I’d eat the beans cold and then warm myself up with a cup of tea! I mean, this girl has STANDARDS!
😂😂😂 Perhaps adding a good thermos to your kitchenware would provide hot (or at least warm) water for a few hours after filling from your kettle. IDK. What works in your campervan works in your home kitchen.
When we camp in our teardrop, which has very limited electrical options, I boil water in a huge (I think a gallon) coffee pot. After we have coffee, I use the rest of the hot (now warm) water to wash dishes and self. Spare living at its most refined.
That’s a downside of compact camping: the lack of hot running water. Most of the time we’re at commercial campsites, though, where there are excellent washing and washing-up facilities - although one day perhaps we’ll have a fancier van with plumbed-in hot water aaaaaaaaand maybe even a shower?????!!!! Hmmmm, that’s not happening any time soon, but a girl can dream!
True, a girl can dream. My husband finally tried to squelch my dreams by buying a teardrop trailer. It's a cute little thing, (emphasis on little) that we've taken into the wilds. Other than a bed and a sort-of kitchen with a camp stove, there's not much else. I envy your campervan. At least it has some sort of bathroom facilities, doesn't it?
Ermmmmmm yessssssssssss….. kind of - a PortaPotti (we call it the thunderbox!) which is stowed in a little cupboard. When we get the van ready to sleep in we take the thunderbox out and tuck it out of the way just under the bed ready to be used in case one of us needs a wee in the night. But mostly we use the facilities at the campsite.
When we first got the van we made lots of trips for work, and because of Covid (Jim started that 18-month all-over-the-country work project just after the first lockdown, and he’s immunosuppressed and I’m a scaredy-cat) we chose not to use campsite washrooms (some weren’t even open at the time) or indeed go into any buildings at all, so we relied on the thunderbox and on a solar-powered shower. We’d either boil the kettle to fill a 10-litre collapsible bucket, or, if there was an outside hot tap, we’d get a bucket of warm water from there and retreat into our awning to take it in turns to shower - one end of the contraption would be in the bucket, and at the other end of the pipe was the shower head, which worked using its own solar electric pump. Oh, and Jim bought a tiny, tiny little tent to house just the thunderbox, because, y’know. 🫣
These days I don’t think twice about using the proper facilities at the campsite, and am grateful to have access to such things!
We do much the same when at campsites, although a nighttime trip to the camp facilities could be an adventure. We were in one campground where there was a "camp" bear who'd make the rounds every night. Forgetting this my little Border Collie, Cinch, and I made a midnight trip about thirty meters away. There were lights, so my lantern was almost redundant. Anyway, we returned to the teardrop and got all tucked back in when Cinch started to growl. She was answered by an even deeper growl from just outside the door. Jeff and I hoped the bear wouldn't use one claw to flip the door open and devoured us all. Since we stowed all our food in the provided bear box, the beast was probably just expressing his distain that we no treats for him and off he went to explore somebody else's camp. You know what's really dumb is that only recently I've been thinking that I could've met Mr. Bear face-to-face on the road. Come to think of it, I can't really remember if I took Cinch with me or not. I was alone in my midnight wanderings. You know, Rebecca, ignorance is bliss and I'm all blissed out over here.
My mom and I drink a LOT of tea. Our kettle (small, non-electric whistling Revereware) is the hardest working item in our house. We had to replace an older one last year and my mom insisted on buying this one second-hand, I think so that it would already be experienced and competent at its task.
I love that your mom chose a quality second-hand item for the job, Kerry - that’s brilliant! There’s a lot to be said for engaging employees with experience, and your new-to-you kettle is just such an employee! PERFECT! 🤩
I love a kettle and secretly hope for ours to break too. I yearn for a pricey Smeg - or old (very) old school Russell Hobbes! I feel certain these options are well out of reach though ...
That said, all this was hilarious and well told. And those 'recipes' gah! I was reminded of a (male) supervisor who thought it was perfectly alright to use our staff kettle to re-heat his cold coffee in, from a previous day. Disgusting! Hope you're feeling better these days xo
Reheating coffee in the kettle? That sounds like a revolting practice - not just because of compromising the kettle (because that’s revolting enough!) but reheating yesterday’s coffee that’s sat out on the side all night at work? Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
‘I yearn for a pricey Smeg’ is almost an exact quote of something I said recently when admiring the beautiful fridge/freezer at my brother’s new house!
Obviously I don’t wish your current kettle any harm, but I kind of DO if it means you can snag the kettle of your dreams as a result.
And thank you, I’m doing really quite well - you’re so sweet to ask! 😘 I just need to not try to do too much all at once. x
A cuppa so often? My waterworks would be like Victoria Falls!
I have 3 cuppas of herbal tea a day and just manage to squeeze the rest of my daily fluids from a water bottle kept cool in the fridge. Our first cup of tea is at about 10AM. Our last at 8 PM.
As for a noisy kettle - ditch it. Not worth shattering a peaceful day with noisy electrics just for a cuppa. Find a new silent one and love it forever.
Breakfast in our house is porridge cooked with milk on the stove top, so we only need to concentrate on not letting the porridge burn.
Rebecca, I do hope you're okay. Have I missed something you may have announced placed you under the weather? If so, I apologise.
LOL Prue! I don't really enjoy drinking cold drinks, including water, so I guess that I use tea (and coffee) for most of my hydration. Cup of peppermint tea first thing, cup of high octane tea with breakfast, then a couple more after that, then decaf coffee at eleven, then tea with or after lunch, and after that I'll switch back to peppermint tea or decaf tea, with a cup of decaf coffee after dinner. I guess I do drink quite a lot!
We were really surprised that the new kettle is so very loud - thankfully we have a chime repeater for the doorbell in the kitchen so we haven't yet missed anybody at the door, but I STILL forget that I'm at risk of missing phone calls. Silly, really.
All is well - you're kind to ask, thank you so much. You haven't missed any kind of announcement, but I've been struggling with my energy levels - fatigue, weakness, weight loss - for a while now, and that means that I'm perhaps not as on-the-ball with Substack as I had been, so I've mentioned 'lack of energy' etc just a couple of times by way of explanation for why I haven't been around quite as much as I'd like to have been! I think it might be chronic fatigue. I've seen a couple of doctors, and all is well. xxx
A sure cure for weakness, fatigue, and weight loss.... one week in Tuscany, in a small guest house in the middle of a vineyard. No computer, just a notebook and a small box of art materials. You owe it to yourself. A second honeymoon. I recommend it.
Oh Rebecca, I do sympathise. My daughter had CFS for a number of years. Rest a lot I think and eat organic if you can. Oh and re-hydrate. But wait! You're doing that already. Lots of love and take care. XXXX
My kettle is used mainly for boiling water, but I'm surprised to learn it can serve as a cooking utensil. Mine was purchased solely for tea making and is small, so I'll stick to pots and pans for food items. I'm trying to drink more green tea for the health benefits; speaking of which, I hope you're doing well.
I’m not sure I’m tempted to use mine for cooking in, although I suppose if I were both very hungry and very cold and had no recourse to pots and pans, hmmm, maybe! Just too much mess, right?!
And thank you, yes, all well. Getting there! And gosh, you’ve reminded that I have some green teabags in the larder - I shall reach for those when I’m making my next cup. I’d completely forgotten about them! x
Ouch, Rebecca, a painful promise, cutting your tea drinking in half. Not seeing a drinking problem, don’t feel guilty running it back to full throttle.
I’m on a second electric kettle, not because it wore out, but malplacement. I had a habit of taking it off its stand and putting it in the electric stovetop. Worked great, until my wife turned on the wrong stove element.
LOL Geoff - that malplacement issue is easily done! I once melted a Tupperware container under similar circumstances - mind you, that was rather less of an inconvenience than if it had been the kettle! 🤣
I last cut down on my tea drinking when thanks to those long Covid lockdowns I’d developed a chain-drinking habit of refilling my cup the moment I’d finished it. Back then I drank tea without milk…. and suddenly (too late!) noticed the absolutely dreadful effect it was having on my teeth! I went tea- and in fact also caffeine-free in cold turkey style, and didn’t drink caffeine for a long, long time. I’m now back on to high-octane, and now take my tea with milk again. 😁😁😁
Ha ha ha! I loved your humour in this one Rebecca! We have been through three kettles since I moved to the UK 14 years ago. We use them a lot too, and I was delighted to learn to use them for starting hot water to use in a POT on the Rayburn in our last house. Our most recent pot was felled by the rapid accumulation of very hard water on the Island. Now we are more diligent about cleaning it regularly to keep the limescale down. Wishing you luck on the decreased tea consumption! I alternate hot/warm water with tea during the winter months. when I want to hold a warm mug and keep fluids moving through. I just use the warm water left in the kettle...😉
Limescale is such a bugbear! I’m so used to hard water where we live - having to use a lot of soap/shampoo/washing up liquid just to get a lather - that it’s always a surprise when I spend time in softer-water areas and it takes ten minutes to rinse soap off my hands.
On a trip to the Midlands a few years ago I had a very bad fall in the hotel shower thanks to not using the rubber shower mat. There’s no real need for such things where I live - shower trays just AREN’T slippery - so it didn’t occur to me to use one. The hotel staff were incredulous. Luckily I was at an event with plenty of medical staff present - our suspicions that I’d broken a rib when I landed on the side of the bath were thankfully unfounded, but gosh, it hurt me to move for WEEKS afterwards.
And now? Rubber shower mats all the way! And I use WAY less shampoo when I’m away from home……
Costs a fortune in soap, right?! Takes an age to get any bubbles around here if you’re used to much softer water - let’s blame those gorgeous white cliffs of ours! x
No. No, no, no, no. Eggs or pasta in an electric kettle. All kinds of NO!
But, yes to the rest of this fun story, Rebecca. The illustration, the "suspicious delivery," the hysterical married-couple conversation made more complicated by the closed door and the noisy kettle, the generational tea-making guidelines, the camper van beverage-making, and more than anything, Jim paying such close attention to you. Melted my heart!
You and my hubby would get on well with your all-day liquid consumption. I'm happy with my two cups between 10:30 and 2:00. :) Aren't we funny about our habits?
When Dad used to travel for work (longhaul pilot) not all hotel rooms had kettles, so he used to pack a large ceramic mug and an immersion boiler, which was essentially a kettle element without the kettle. I’m just trying to imagine people trying to scramble eggs with one of those - and those thoughts are not pretty! 🤣
I’m very lucky that Jim looks after me so beautifully! I picked a great man for a husband. 😊 He doesn’t drink nearly so much tea as I do - you’re so right that we’re all so different.
Those recipes will ensure one remains unmarried. 🤢
And how loud can a kettle be?! (Imagining a tinny speaker that broadcasts “Rule Britannia” as it reaches a frenzied boil.) Or does he have some hearing superpower?
Oh Bryn - someone needs to make the kettle which plays ‘Rule Britannia’! And now I want to know how loud the new kettle is in dB - I shall have to measure it.
It’s just that it’s soooo much louder than the last one - but now that I’ve realised I’ve been missing phone calls I make sure I take the phone with me every time I switch the kettle on!
🤣 Ooooh, you’ve just reminded me that I need to enlist Jim’s help to find the right app (I thought my Health app would do it but it’s not playing ball!). Still, I’ve been boiling the kettle a lot in my research - which as you know always makes me happy, because it means more TEA. 😁
I used to have an egg cooker, but it stopped working and I didn't replace it. You've reminded me they are quite easy and convenient to use. I'm so sorry to hear you still are under the weather. If you were my neighbor, I'd bring you some chicken soup. So please accept a pot of virtual chicken soup if you aren't a vegetarian. And if you are, I'll make you a hearty vege soup. GET WELL, friend. 💚💚💚
Aww, thank you for the virtual chicken soup, Sue - you’re a sweetheart! All will be well - I just need to shake off this tiredness somehow! I’m behind on my reading, for one thing, and that’s such a shame! xxx
Don't fret about what you are behind on. Worry is counterproductive for healing. All that reading will be waiting patiently for you when you feel back to par. Or, you can just delete it all if it's on the computer, and start fresh as there will still be a backlog going forward, ha! I once accidentally deleted all my emails. At first I was horrified. But soon I began to actually feel lighter. And do you know, there was never a problem that I became aware of. Hopefully a friend didn't get their feelings hurt because I hadn't replied, but if they did, I never found out about it. Anyway, take good care.
Oh Sue, such wise words - thank you! LOL - ‘backlog going forward’ - I can relate to that, even in advance! Gosh, bad luck re that mass e-mail deletion - but in the same way wow, how freeing! x
Can I remember all the things I wanted to comment on?? (No)
1. Sometimes I think that people forget where eggs come from! (Chook bums, along with poo etc)
2. The people I know who drink LOTS of tea installed an under-sink water boiler so that they have boiling water on hand whenever they want it
3. The gentlemen’s recipes won’t work in a kettle with the element visible at the bottom. Shudder!!!
4. Terrific read. It’s too late for a cuppa unfortunately but a lovely thought. Hugs from afar. 🤗🤗❤️💕
Thanks, Beth! 😘
That’s EXACTLY why I wouldn’t want to boil eggs in a kettle! Yuckety yuck!
Ooooh, I’ve heard of those, a brand called Quooker. The thing is, though, it delivers water at 100°C, which of course, yes, is boiling point, but is it really, really boiling? REALLY boiling? What I so loved about growing up with a proper kettle on my parents’ Aga is that the water was always what we’d call ‘Aga-hot’, and cups of tea would stay hot for aaaaaages!
Gosh no, they wouldn’t - can you imagine the MESS? I’ve heard of people heating up tins of beans in kettles - taking the label off the tin first, submerging the tin in the water in the kettle and switching the kettle on (making sure they’ve made a hole in the top of the can first) but I’m not sure I’d even dare to do THAT!!!!!!!
Thank you so much! Hugs back! 🤗
I don't think the boiling water taps make good tea. We use water that is just off the boil, precisely 97.8 degrees. The water is drizzled over the tea leaves, and allowed to bloom and bask for 7 minutes. Milk is gently poured in and stirred anticlockwise.
I’m a coffee drinker (2-3 double espressos) before school and thereafter a constant tea drinker throughout the day (the staff room is less than 10 steps from my classroom). Without the industrial kettle … well, I shudder to think!
Wow Bryan, that’s what I’d call starting the day with a bang! 💥 Nice one for bagging the classroom closest to the staff room - I’m impressed! That would suit me, too - or a pipeline direct to a non-stop tea supply would come a close second, I guess! I’ve always got a cuppa on the go (although I don’t always drink the same thing - I have a couple of cups of decaf coffee every day, and if I feel my caffeine intake from my tea habit is getting silly I’ll grudgingly have a cup of decaf tea or peppermint tea).
The vignette of your grandmother’s tea-making routine! Such memorable details!
Thanks, Amie! That claw thing for opening the tap was absolutely brilliant!
Such a wonderfully funny letter today! A great way to wake me up as I drink my coffee! I drink tea all day long after 11 am.
I boil water in my kettle for pasta. But pour it into a pot on the stove. Obviously it is a quicker way to get hot water, by a few minutes anyway.
I keep eyeing my electric kettle which is showing its age and contemplating if it is time to replace it. Still working but the outside is aged and worn…kind of like me. I could replace it with a new one and I could watch the bubbles as it comes to a boil. That would be more entertaining!
Ah, Gail, what has happened to us that we are entertained by watching bubbles rise...? I often waste thirty minutes watching a handsome man get a haircut on Youtube and call it entertainment..... what a sad confession.
LOL - I love this!
During the first Covid lockdown I watched a 30-minute YT video of a handsome man getting a haircut several times and then cut the hair of my OWN handsome man with added confidence!
Over four years later I have only just relinquished the task of cutting Jim’s hair every few weeks, because we’ve both finally made it back to the scissors of the professionals at the Village Hair Shop!
Get a cup of tea and give this a try. So relaxing to me. Massive makeover, really sweet, handsome men. A little addictive, I warn you…. “Regal Gentleman”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPGiPpB9d74&ab_channel=RegalGentleman
Thanks, Gail! Yes, I quite often boil water before I use it to cook something on the stove - it saves a lot of time!
I love the idea of watching the bubbles. Our kettle's got a clear side panel so you can see into the main body of it, so maybe I'll have a look at the bubbles next time! Our kettle's so new that I'm still getting distracted by the 'what's that funny little blue light in the garden?' optical illusion caused by the illuminated switch on the kettle being reflected in the kitchen door!
"In an instant I’d pledged to reduce my hourly cup of tea routine by fifty per cent..." ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, yes, like that's ever going to happen...
As far as cooking pasta in a tea kettle? Urg. Easy, yes, but why not just open a can of ready-made spaghetti and dump it in. That's really easy, if you don't mind your next cup of tea having the flavor of garlic and rosemary.... A clean-up nightmare. Great post, Rebecca!
Ha! You’ve probably already guessed that I had edited my draft of this post to change ‘30 minutes’ to ‘an hour’ in the first place….. so yup, in reality I am pretending to have QUARTERED my tea consumption when in fact I seem to be struggling to achieve anything like it! 🤣 LOL!
LOL to the clean-up nightmare - although I HAVE heard of people heating up tins of beans in the kettle, albeit by lowering the entire tin (once the top has been pierced to minimise risk of explosion) into the kettle and switching it off. Bit too risky for me - oh, and I don’t really eat baked beans. I mean heck, if I were that desperate for something to eat and had a tin of beans and a kettle available, I’d eat the beans cold and then warm myself up with a cup of tea! I mean, this girl has STANDARDS!
x
😂😂😂 Perhaps adding a good thermos to your kitchenware would provide hot (or at least warm) water for a few hours after filling from your kettle. IDK. What works in your campervan works in your home kitchen.
When we camp in our teardrop, which has very limited electrical options, I boil water in a huge (I think a gallon) coffee pot. After we have coffee, I use the rest of the hot (now warm) water to wash dishes and self. Spare living at its most refined.
Oooh, now that’s a good idea!
That’s a downside of compact camping: the lack of hot running water. Most of the time we’re at commercial campsites, though, where there are excellent washing and washing-up facilities - although one day perhaps we’ll have a fancier van with plumbed-in hot water aaaaaaaaand maybe even a shower?????!!!! Hmmmm, that’s not happening any time soon, but a girl can dream!
True, a girl can dream. My husband finally tried to squelch my dreams by buying a teardrop trailer. It's a cute little thing, (emphasis on little) that we've taken into the wilds. Other than a bed and a sort-of kitchen with a camp stove, there's not much else. I envy your campervan. At least it has some sort of bathroom facilities, doesn't it?
Ermmmmmm yessssssssssss….. kind of - a PortaPotti (we call it the thunderbox!) which is stowed in a little cupboard. When we get the van ready to sleep in we take the thunderbox out and tuck it out of the way just under the bed ready to be used in case one of us needs a wee in the night. But mostly we use the facilities at the campsite.
When we first got the van we made lots of trips for work, and because of Covid (Jim started that 18-month all-over-the-country work project just after the first lockdown, and he’s immunosuppressed and I’m a scaredy-cat) we chose not to use campsite washrooms (some weren’t even open at the time) or indeed go into any buildings at all, so we relied on the thunderbox and on a solar-powered shower. We’d either boil the kettle to fill a 10-litre collapsible bucket, or, if there was an outside hot tap, we’d get a bucket of warm water from there and retreat into our awning to take it in turns to shower - one end of the contraption would be in the bucket, and at the other end of the pipe was the shower head, which worked using its own solar electric pump. Oh, and Jim bought a tiny, tiny little tent to house just the thunderbox, because, y’know. 🫣
These days I don’t think twice about using the proper facilities at the campsite, and am grateful to have access to such things!
We do much the same when at campsites, although a nighttime trip to the camp facilities could be an adventure. We were in one campground where there was a "camp" bear who'd make the rounds every night. Forgetting this my little Border Collie, Cinch, and I made a midnight trip about thirty meters away. There were lights, so my lantern was almost redundant. Anyway, we returned to the teardrop and got all tucked back in when Cinch started to growl. She was answered by an even deeper growl from just outside the door. Jeff and I hoped the bear wouldn't use one claw to flip the door open and devoured us all. Since we stowed all our food in the provided bear box, the beast was probably just expressing his distain that we no treats for him and off he went to explore somebody else's camp. You know what's really dumb is that only recently I've been thinking that I could've met Mr. Bear face-to-face on the road. Come to think of it, I can't really remember if I took Cinch with me or not. I was alone in my midnight wanderings. You know, Rebecca, ignorance is bliss and I'm all blissed out over here.
Oh my goodness me, that sounds terrifying! Wow, what a story!!! 🏕️🐻🫣
I hope your new kettle brings you joy x
Thanks so much - I’m glad to report that it’s doing a pretty good job so far! 🙌
My mom and I drink a LOT of tea. Our kettle (small, non-electric whistling Revereware) is the hardest working item in our house. We had to replace an older one last year and my mom insisted on buying this one second-hand, I think so that it would already be experienced and competent at its task.
I love that your mom chose a quality second-hand item for the job, Kerry - that’s brilliant! There’s a lot to be said for engaging employees with experience, and your new-to-you kettle is just such an employee! PERFECT! 🤩
I love a kettle and secretly hope for ours to break too. I yearn for a pricey Smeg - or old (very) old school Russell Hobbes! I feel certain these options are well out of reach though ...
That said, all this was hilarious and well told. And those 'recipes' gah! I was reminded of a (male) supervisor who thought it was perfectly alright to use our staff kettle to re-heat his cold coffee in, from a previous day. Disgusting! Hope you're feeling better these days xo
Reheating coffee in the kettle? That sounds like a revolting practice - not just because of compromising the kettle (because that’s revolting enough!) but reheating yesterday’s coffee that’s sat out on the side all night at work? Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
‘I yearn for a pricey Smeg’ is almost an exact quote of something I said recently when admiring the beautiful fridge/freezer at my brother’s new house!
Obviously I don’t wish your current kettle any harm, but I kind of DO if it means you can snag the kettle of your dreams as a result.
And thank you, I’m doing really quite well - you’re so sweet to ask! 😘 I just need to not try to do too much all at once. x
Ye Gods!
A cuppa so often? My waterworks would be like Victoria Falls!
I have 3 cuppas of herbal tea a day and just manage to squeeze the rest of my daily fluids from a water bottle kept cool in the fridge. Our first cup of tea is at about 10AM. Our last at 8 PM.
As for a noisy kettle - ditch it. Not worth shattering a peaceful day with noisy electrics just for a cuppa. Find a new silent one and love it forever.
Breakfast in our house is porridge cooked with milk on the stove top, so we only need to concentrate on not letting the porridge burn.
Rebecca, I do hope you're okay. Have I missed something you may have announced placed you under the weather? If so, I apologise.
LOL Prue! I don't really enjoy drinking cold drinks, including water, so I guess that I use tea (and coffee) for most of my hydration. Cup of peppermint tea first thing, cup of high octane tea with breakfast, then a couple more after that, then decaf coffee at eleven, then tea with or after lunch, and after that I'll switch back to peppermint tea or decaf tea, with a cup of decaf coffee after dinner. I guess I do drink quite a lot!
We were really surprised that the new kettle is so very loud - thankfully we have a chime repeater for the doorbell in the kitchen so we haven't yet missed anybody at the door, but I STILL forget that I'm at risk of missing phone calls. Silly, really.
All is well - you're kind to ask, thank you so much. You haven't missed any kind of announcement, but I've been struggling with my energy levels - fatigue, weakness, weight loss - for a while now, and that means that I'm perhaps not as on-the-ball with Substack as I had been, so I've mentioned 'lack of energy' etc just a couple of times by way of explanation for why I haven't been around quite as much as I'd like to have been! I think it might be chronic fatigue. I've seen a couple of doctors, and all is well. xxx
A sure cure for weakness, fatigue, and weight loss.... one week in Tuscany, in a small guest house in the middle of a vineyard. No computer, just a notebook and a small box of art materials. You owe it to yourself. A second honeymoon. I recommend it.
OOOOOOOOOOH! Now you’re talking, Sharron! I shall send you a postcard! x
Oh Rebecca, I do sympathise. My daughter had CFS for a number of years. Rest a lot I think and eat organic if you can. Oh and re-hydrate. But wait! You're doing that already. Lots of love and take care. XXXX
I’m extremely well-hydrated with tea, yes! 👍 Thank you so, so much for your kindness. xxx
My kettle is used mainly for boiling water, but I'm surprised to learn it can serve as a cooking utensil. Mine was purchased solely for tea making and is small, so I'll stick to pots and pans for food items. I'm trying to drink more green tea for the health benefits; speaking of which, I hope you're doing well.
I’m not sure I’m tempted to use mine for cooking in, although I suppose if I were both very hungry and very cold and had no recourse to pots and pans, hmmm, maybe! Just too much mess, right?!
And thank you, yes, all well. Getting there! And gosh, you’ve reminded that I have some green teabags in the larder - I shall reach for those when I’m making my next cup. I’d completely forgotten about them! x
Ouch, Rebecca, a painful promise, cutting your tea drinking in half. Not seeing a drinking problem, don’t feel guilty running it back to full throttle.
I’m on a second electric kettle, not because it wore out, but malplacement. I had a habit of taking it off its stand and putting it in the electric stovetop. Worked great, until my wife turned on the wrong stove element.
LOL Geoff - that malplacement issue is easily done! I once melted a Tupperware container under similar circumstances - mind you, that was rather less of an inconvenience than if it had been the kettle! 🤣
I last cut down on my tea drinking when thanks to those long Covid lockdowns I’d developed a chain-drinking habit of refilling my cup the moment I’d finished it. Back then I drank tea without milk…. and suddenly (too late!) noticed the absolutely dreadful effect it was having on my teeth! I went tea- and in fact also caffeine-free in cold turkey style, and didn’t drink caffeine for a long, long time. I’m now back on to high-octane, and now take my tea with milk again. 😁😁😁
Too funny. Why is it in life the good things are bad for us? Gives us more to write about I guess.
I know, right?!
Ha ha ha! I loved your humour in this one Rebecca! We have been through three kettles since I moved to the UK 14 years ago. We use them a lot too, and I was delighted to learn to use them for starting hot water to use in a POT on the Rayburn in our last house. Our most recent pot was felled by the rapid accumulation of very hard water on the Island. Now we are more diligent about cleaning it regularly to keep the limescale down. Wishing you luck on the decreased tea consumption! I alternate hot/warm water with tea during the winter months. when I want to hold a warm mug and keep fluids moving through. I just use the warm water left in the kettle...😉
Limescale is such a bugbear! I’m so used to hard water where we live - having to use a lot of soap/shampoo/washing up liquid just to get a lather - that it’s always a surprise when I spend time in softer-water areas and it takes ten minutes to rinse soap off my hands.
On a trip to the Midlands a few years ago I had a very bad fall in the hotel shower thanks to not using the rubber shower mat. There’s no real need for such things where I live - shower trays just AREN’T slippery - so it didn’t occur to me to use one. The hotel staff were incredulous. Luckily I was at an event with plenty of medical staff present - our suspicions that I’d broken a rib when I landed on the side of the bath were thankfully unfounded, but gosh, it hurt me to move for WEEKS afterwards.
And now? Rubber shower mats all the way! And I use WAY less shampoo when I’m away from home……
Oh wow! That is terrifying! What a way to learn about the characteristics of water vs soap in different regions!
I always lived in regions with amazingly delicious non-hard water until now on the island. So it’s been a learning curve…
Costs a fortune in soap, right?! Takes an age to get any bubbles around here if you’re used to much softer water - let’s blame those gorgeous white cliffs of ours! x
No. No, no, no, no. Eggs or pasta in an electric kettle. All kinds of NO!
But, yes to the rest of this fun story, Rebecca. The illustration, the "suspicious delivery," the hysterical married-couple conversation made more complicated by the closed door and the noisy kettle, the generational tea-making guidelines, the camper van beverage-making, and more than anything, Jim paying such close attention to you. Melted my heart!
You and my hubby would get on well with your all-day liquid consumption. I'm happy with my two cups between 10:30 and 2:00. :) Aren't we funny about our habits?
I know - revolting, right?!
When Dad used to travel for work (longhaul pilot) not all hotel rooms had kettles, so he used to pack a large ceramic mug and an immersion boiler, which was essentially a kettle element without the kettle. I’m just trying to imagine people trying to scramble eggs with one of those - and those thoughts are not pretty! 🤣
I’m very lucky that Jim looks after me so beautifully! I picked a great man for a husband. 😊 He doesn’t drink nearly so much tea as I do - you’re so right that we’re all so different.
Those recipes will ensure one remains unmarried. 🤢
And how loud can a kettle be?! (Imagining a tinny speaker that broadcasts “Rule Britannia” as it reaches a frenzied boil.) Or does he have some hearing superpower?
Hope you’re feeling better 💕
Oh Bryn - someone needs to make the kettle which plays ‘Rule Britannia’! And now I want to know how loud the new kettle is in dB - I shall have to measure it.
It’s just that it’s soooo much louder than the last one - but now that I’ve realised I’ve been missing phone calls I make sure I take the phone with me every time I switch the kettle on!
I’m quite curious to hear how loud this kettle is!
🤣 Ooooh, you’ve just reminded me that I need to enlist Jim’s help to find the right app (I thought my Health app would do it but it’s not playing ball!). Still, I’ve been boiling the kettle a lot in my research - which as you know always makes me happy, because it means more TEA. 😁
I used to have an egg cooker, but it stopped working and I didn't replace it. You've reminded me they are quite easy and convenient to use. I'm so sorry to hear you still are under the weather. If you were my neighbor, I'd bring you some chicken soup. So please accept a pot of virtual chicken soup if you aren't a vegetarian. And if you are, I'll make you a hearty vege soup. GET WELL, friend. 💚💚💚
Aww, thank you for the virtual chicken soup, Sue - you’re a sweetheart! All will be well - I just need to shake off this tiredness somehow! I’m behind on my reading, for one thing, and that’s such a shame! xxx
Don't fret about what you are behind on. Worry is counterproductive for healing. All that reading will be waiting patiently for you when you feel back to par. Or, you can just delete it all if it's on the computer, and start fresh as there will still be a backlog going forward, ha! I once accidentally deleted all my emails. At first I was horrified. But soon I began to actually feel lighter. And do you know, there was never a problem that I became aware of. Hopefully a friend didn't get their feelings hurt because I hadn't replied, but if they did, I never found out about it. Anyway, take good care.
Oh Sue, such wise words - thank you! LOL - ‘backlog going forward’ - I can relate to that, even in advance! Gosh, bad luck re that mass e-mail deletion - but in the same way wow, how freeing! x