Watched Pots… « Katyboo1's Weblog
All the utility appliances in Canada are enormous. I think that’s why everyone’s houses are so much bigger too. You have to have such a whopping place to fit in your four foot wide fridge, cooker, washing machine and tumble drier. They are Huuuuuge.
This place is no exception. The drum on the washing machine is so vast that I could get Oscar inside it should I so desire, although we will not mention this to him because he would be way too keen to try it out. The oven is the size of my range at home, even though it only has four rings, and the fridge is about the size of Scotland.
And did I mention the gadgets? In this place they have gone gadget mad. The kitchen is enormous and filled with cupboards, yet when I came to put my groceries away I ended up having to store them on the counter tops because the cupboards were all full of stuff with plugs on the end. Stuff that allows you to do other stuff. Popcorn makers, blenders, dicers, choppers, pounders, liquidisers, grinders, waffle makers. It is terrifying. I have looked at some of the things and found them so baffling I have just shut the doors again and decided not to think about it. It makes my head hurt. Not as much as finding three, count them, three, cupboards stuffed to the rafters with tins of chickpeas. Should there ever be an international chickpea shortage you will know where to come. I like chickpeas. I can pack away a lot of chickpeas in various forms, but there must have been about seventy cans in there. The mind boggles. Maybe they’re going to have a hoummus convention in the summer?
One gadget that is sadly missing from this smorgasbord of kitchen technology however, is a plug in kettle. They do sell them over here, it’s just that not many households seem to have them. This household certainly doesn’t. And I really miss it. There is a coffee machine, which I have tested to capacity and found suitable, and then there is a kettle which sits on the hob of largeness and requires boiling using fire.
I love the idea of this. I have a hob kettle at home actually. I use it in the rare event of a power cut. One must never be without the wherewithal to boil water, and cups of tea made from saucepans never do taste right, even if it’s your saucepan, your water and your fire. They are charming and quaint and lovely.
They also take a bloody age to boil.
And that’s not good if you’re used to filling the kettle, flicking a switch and getting boiling water in under two minutes. The kettle on this stove takes a good ten minutes to boil, by which time we are lying on the floor, dramatically grasping the tiles and shouting hoarsely for ‘teaaaaaaaaaa!’
We were in Walmart today buying the kids some wellingtons. The garden is soaked through and very boggy by the tree line, so this was quite urgent if we didn’t want them to develop webbed feet. We looked at the electric kettles and thought about buying one. Then I remembered. In the last house we rented here there was a kettle. The chap we rented it from came from an Indian (as in India, Indian rather than Native American) family, and had been trained in the ways of constant tea making at all hours of the day and night. We were thrilled. Then we used it.
It took a bloody age.
The power supply here is much weedier than in the U.K., which is why you will find electrical sockets in bathrooms and under water etc. It is almost impossible to electrocute yourself to death, unlike in the U.K. where you merely have to wave a wet wipe in the direction of a bare wire to be fried to a crisp. Here is much safer and more humane, except if you want a cuppa in a hurry, in which case you will turn into a raving psychopath whilst waiting for the kettle to boil and kill everyone in your tannin deprived rage. If I ever moved here I think I would have to smuggle my own power cables under the ocean. That would solve it.
Anyway, in revenge for the crapness of our kettle we have actually managed to melt it. It is made of metal mostly, which is good, on a hob. But it has a plastic whistle type thingy. I plonked it on the hob and turned the gas up to nuclear to get it boiling quicker. I then waltzed off to stop the children killing each other, safe in the knowledge that I had at least half an hour before the kettle boiled itself dry. Jason wandered past a few minutes later and wondered what the acrid, burning smell was. Turns out it was the kettle whistle thing melting, where I had failed to place it squarely on the heat and the gas flames had licked up the side. Whoops.
We have confessed to the house owner who seemed singularly unimpressed at our stupidity. We refrained from mentioning the stupidity of having to wait for ten minutes for a kettle to boil, feeling rather sheepish, and will now have to go out to purchase a new, unmelted kettle to make amends.
So now we know. A watched pot never boils, but sometimes it melts…