New Kettle

June 24, 2020

Every so often, Bruce puts the kettle on to boil to make tea or coffee in the French press and forgets it. He’ll walk back to his office, put his headphones on, turn on some tunes, and get caught up in coding, email, social media, YouTube, or a game.

If the kettle whistles while Nox is in the kitchen, she’ll go into Bruce’s office and get Bruce’s attention. She’ll walk up to him, stand on her back legs, and put her front paws on his knee. Then she’ll go run to the door, look back and if he doesn’t move, she’ll do it again. He’ll get up and follow her to see what she wants and then he’ll hear the kettle whistling.

With the nice weather, Nox and Luna have been hanging outside a good bit. When not outside, they are hanging out at my feet or in my lap while I work. Nox isn’t worried about the kettle when she isn’t in the kitchen.

Bruce started setting a timer and taking the timer into the office to remind him to check the kettle when the timer goes off. Early last week, he forgot to set his timer and I was working with my headphones on, so I didn’t hear the kettle whistle. I started smelling something bad, like computer equipment overheating with an underlying smell of something burning.

I got up and ran to Bruce’s office, “Does that smell like something burning to you?”

He looked up and and said, “Yes”. He started looking over his equipment, while I started checking other parts of the house. I got to the kitchen and realized that Bruce had left the kettle on and it had boiled dry. It was smoking.

I yelled, “Bruce” and he came running, yelling, “what is it?” and as he came around the corner, I said “It’s the kettle. You left it on.” I have no idea how long the kettle had been sitting on the stove without water in it.

While I was annoyed that he had let the kettle boil dry, I was relieved that nothing was on fire. I hoped that my beautiful KitchenAid Empire Red kettle, bought on sale for $10, would be fine once it cooled down.

Unfortunately, the kettle had overheated so much that when Bruce used the kettle again, the enamel around the edge of the bottom flaked off. It left a ring of enamel on the burner.

Since this was not the first kettle that had been burned up, I suggested to Bruce that we should get an electric kettle that will turn off automatically after the water comes to boil. I told him it should be something we could use when we go full-time RVing.

He looked around on Amazon and found a nice electric kettle, Secura SWK-1701DB The Original Stainless Steel Double Wall Electric Water Kettle 1.8 Quart, and bought it. It comes in several colors, but he bought black. If I had purchased the kettle, I would’ve bought it in red, as I like red accents in my kitchen.

The kettle arrived on Sunday and we’ve been using it since. I’m pleased with it so far. It has a sleek look, is easy to fill, pours nicely, and is easy to operate. The outside doesn’t get hot and the inside is double walled stainless steel.