I don’t make tea often. When I do, I nuke tap water in a cup in the microwave. But some time ago I thought I should really have a proper teakettle.
That would never occur to me now. I’ve gone Amish. I don’t want any more stuff than I already have. If I can heat water in a chipped blue-speckled enamelware saucepan on the stove, that’s plenty good enough. So much of what I bought when I was younger was pure self-decoration. I was accessorizing. I would like to have this cool item here, I thought. This material item says good things about me.
It’s not an uncommon urge. It’s why most people have matching dinnerware and napkins even though, strictly speaking, any old random dishery would still get the job done. It’s not the sort of attitude we would have if we were more mindful of our limited natural resources and the real cost of their extraction. But I have a dozen place settings in case six more people show up than I can fit around my table, and I have a guest bedroom for the two or three nights a year I might want one, and I need a teakettle in case anyone ever shows up who likes tea from a teakettle.
And what I wanted was a teakettle that made a lonesome train-whistle sound when it got up a head of steam. My friend had one and the sound made me think of foggy valleys and Stephen Foster songs and long-lost love. I went shopping and found an elegant teakettle that promised to whistle. It wasn’t cheap, either.
Then I filled it up and waited for that lonesome whistle to blow. Well, boy howdy. It whistled like a Category Five with ambition. It whistled like Paul Bunyan calling his ox from a county away. It whistled like a dude blowing reveille at a cicada camp. Works good, if all you’re interested in is knowing when your water’s hot enough. And if your neighbors up and down the block are also interested. And if you hate dogs.
So far the teakettle has done two things for me: produced hot water on the rare occasion, and sharpened my reflexes. The teakettle gives you a short warning wheeze before scaring the paint off the ceiling and I can yank it off the burner within three seconds no matter where I am in the house. It’s like how your cat makes a horka horka sound on your bed and you can come out of a deep sleep to launch the critter before the third horka.
That teakettle comes out about once a year and lives the rest of the time in a low, dark corner cabinet. I have to get down on my hands and knees and pull other things out to get at it, leaving a large portion of my anatomy vulnerable. Don’t anyone be calling that ox.
I have been donating stuff — like kitchenware — that I never or seldom use. Extra dinnerware, because we don’t have “dinner parties” anymore. Maybe just two more people, so what do I need place settings for eight for? A lot of my serving pieces are gone for the same reason. Even my canning supplies will be soon gone, as I don’t have the “grippiness” to properly seal the pressure canner, and I don’t want to wait until Paul is around to do it for me. I hate parting with it, but if I’m no longer going to use it, why keep it? So our vegetable garden will be smaller this summer. A couple tomato plants for salads and sandwiches. ONE jalapeño plant, because Paul likes them fresh. The rest of the space will be various herbs, because I use them a lot for cooking. Fortunately, we have an organic farm market close by, so I can buy any vegetables I need there.
All this stuff takes up valuable space, as I have to keep things where I can get to them easily. Things that I actually USE. I have shrunk as far as height, and can no longer reach the top shelves even with a stepstool. I can reach the cabinet under the sink, where we mostly have cleaning supplies, but I have to grunt and groan to do it. I don’t know how the sound effects help, but they do. Without them I would just loll around on my back, trying to get up, like a bug or a horseshoe crab.
Reminds me of Leo Kottke talking about how June bugs just land on the porch upside down and wiggle their feet and the only reason they live to procreated is someone always watches them for a while and then flips them over.
Sudden Teakettle, like Sudden Dave.
Yesss!
I love the kettle! Maybe jam a Phillips screwdriver into the hole and modify it for a more pleasing sound?
I jammed a screwdriver in a light socket once and it made a LOT of noise.
I plugged a nightlight and myself in one night when I was three. I don’t recall it being noisy, just painful.
You draw lightning.
I have done the screwdriver into the socket more than once. Just trying to put the cover plate back on. Blows circuit breakers. I now must turn off the power to that outlet lest I fry myself. Had an incident while hanging wallpaper. Did not turn off power to the wall. Boom and it threw me across the room. My husband thought it was very funny. I was not amused.
“Cicada camp” and the “horka horka” thing made me bust out laughing. Such a gift you have, Murr!
Why thankee! We must not have many cicadas here. I haven’t heard them in years. But I remember.
That last sentence. I’m almost always familiar with your southernisms, but I don’t know this one. Can’t wait.
Naah, probably just too many paragraphs past the Paul Bunyan reference. Anyway, I don’t want an ox in my kitchen when I’m on all fours with my head in a cabinet. Or Dave either, come to think of it.
I’ve been told that microwave-boiling water is not correct for tea. The water must be brought to a boil in a kettle. I don’t know why that would be true, but just be correct and use the kettle. I had to get an electric kettle that shuts off when the water boils because my husband burned up two of the whistling kind. Set it on the burner and then wandered off and couldn’t hear the whistle.
But WHY?
MURR! Because the just-boiled water must be poured over the bag, of course! You can’t just plunk the bag into just-boiled water. C’mon!
But…
Great post as always, Murr, with many LOL moments! We’re tea drinkers so we have an electric kettle—just add water and flip a switch. It doesn’t whistle but it does turn off automatically. Yes, we have too much stuff! We spent all day yesterday clearing out shelves full of doll boxes (my wife is a collector). A doll is worth more if you have the original box but my wife came to the conclusion that she doesn’t want to sell most of them anyway. Out with dozens of boxes to the recycling depot. We have curb-side pickup here but this was a major load.
Say, have you found any aircraft parts or phones dropped in your yard lately?
I should totally look. I’m four miles from the airport.
I use a ‘tea kettle’ daily, for my one cup of coffee in the morning. I have one of those things that look like a mini french press with a filter, and if I turn the burner on as I’m putting 6 seconds of water into the kettle, I’ll have the precursor to the whistling sound in 3 minutes. It’s a habit, and I’m increasingly a creature of habits.
I have pared down considerably from my kitchen implements of yore, when I cooked elaborate meals. But, sometimes I still got game…
Tonight, I cooked for my son, who doesn’t cook beyond burning eggs and pouring cereal…my daughter in law is away until tomorrow, so I took pity on him and invited him for dinner…
Sockeye salmon teriyaki, wild rice with toasted pine nuts, and charred brussel sprouts, with garlic. I had a glass of Malbec, he’s a teetotaler.
Happy new year to all.
And to you, Mike! Skål!
I use my tea kettle several times a day, not just for tea, but for coffee; I, too, use a French Press. We used to go through those two-cup coffee makers quite often — not because we drink so much coffee, but they’re cheap plastic and have parts that come off. You can’t fix them, so you have to just throw them out and get a new one. I found it wasteful. I refuse to get one of those pod coffee makers. Like we NEED more plastic in our landfills?? So I went with something with a minimal amount of plastic (just the handles and part of the lid are plastic on both the kettle and the press to prevent burns.)
I have a small drip coffeemaker that anyone else would have thrown out by now. It’s rust and weird and you can’t pour out of the pot without dripping, which I’ve never figured out. But. That buying new plastic thing.
When I go to my dentist twice a year, they usually proffer a “gift bag” with a toothpaste sample, floss sample, lip balm, and a PLASTIC toothbrush. I tell them “no thank you.” I use toothpaste for sensitive teeth, BEESWAX lip balm, and a bamboo toothbrush. It just seems so wasteful to accept samples that you KNOW you aren’t going to use.
I first got interested in french press coffee way back, in ’67, in SE Asia, I saw “The Ipcress File” with Michael Caine…in the opening scenes, he used a french press. I was interested, though it took nearly 15 years for me to find one.
My choice for a kettle was determined by two things: That whistle hurts my wife’s ears even if I grab it off the stove at the first wheeze, so that’s out; and I learned the hard way that I need an all-metal kettle as insurance against the NEXT time I leave it on a hot burner after the water has all boiled off. (Last time the handle melted and dripped into the blazing hot pot.) I stopped drinking tea when my MD took me off caffeine (sob!), but I still use a kettle for cocoa and for pre-boiling neti pot water. (Naegleri fowleri infections from tap water are exceedingly rare, but it’s so easy to boil the water first and the price of being wrong is SO high…) When I was still drinking tea, I was a loose-tea-only fanatic. For a long time my favorite was a 50:50 blend of Lapsang Souchong and Earl Grey. (I once heard someone say that buying tea in tea bags is like going to the lumber yard and buying only the sawdust.)
I have only recently realized that I like almost no tea. Black or herbal. Except–and even I think this is highly weird–chamomile.
I buy my tea online usually, from a company called Republic of Tea. They have so many wonderful choices, but my favorite is called Rose Petal tea. It’s a black tea with rosebuds and petals in it. It’s one of the few non-bitter black teas that I’ve tasted, plus it smells wonderful! I also like their People’s Green tea, and their “Beauty Sleep” tea, which has rose petals, chamomile, hibiscus, and blue butterfly pea flower. Smells great, tastes great, and doesn’t have caffeine, so I can drink it at night. I don’t use any sweeteners at all, so any tea I get MUST taste good as it is.
We have an electric kettle—-almost as fast as induction boiling. We could do without but there it is. It boils water, that is ALL IT DOES!
Now I want an induction stovetop. Hmm.
Polish it up and put a bunch of flowers in it. Or donate it.
I’m living with it. It keeps me humble. And it only comes out about twice a year.
Thanks to Jeremy I have aquired a new horrible: naegleria fowleri, the brain-eating amoeba. I will start boiling water I use in a neti pot to avoid this critter. I use an electric kettle with temperature settings for loose green teas which do not react well to 212 degree water but give their best at 176 or so. Pootie is welcome to come share some with me.
They sell nasal saline at the drugstore. I find it just as effective as making my own, and don’t have to go through all that on a daily morning basis anymore.
Pootie’s more of a hot chocolate guy. I’ve never tried a neti pot. Seems too much like self-waterboarding. Also, doesn’t what’s in your nose belong there? You know, mostly?
I got rid of nearly everything I owned in 2010 when I sold my house and became a seasonal National Park ranger tumbleweed. Now that I’m settled in retirement, I am accumulating again. Estate sales make that easy. Breadmaker? Have you seen the cost of bread in the store? Electric can opener? Two manual hand cranked gadgets don’t cut the metal any more. Navajo sand painting? I miss the one I gave away in 1993. The most important addition, however, is my native wildflower garden, which is what makes home ownership so important. Turning sterile clay into something a black-eyed susan wants to grow in takes money. THAT’s why I need a part-time job!
Oh goody, I guess I’m saving money not eating bread! I miss making it, though. I love kneading bread dough.
I really don’t find bread all that expensive. Maybe because we don’t eat that much of it. For a while there, I DID make my own bread (without a “breadmaker) but then I realized the bread I bought from Whole Foods just tasted better. I love their Harvest bread and their baguettes. And Dave’s Killer bread for sandwiches (especially the Good Seed variety.) It’s said that cooking is an art, baking is a science. I guess I’m more an artist than a scientist.
I always have a whistling tea kettle with no wooden handle (see Jeremy’s comment above). Family lore has it that a great (or great great) grandmother died when her non-whistling kettle boiled over, doused the flame, and allowed gas to fill the house. I cannot imagine a house back then being that air tight but that’s the story and it made quite the impression on me. So whistling it is!
Also, may I say I am impressed with how Mike has the timing down on the french press. Bravo!
I learn a lot here.
I had the same instinct some years ago, that perhaps a whistling teakettle would make my kitchen somewhat better. But basically, it just became a pretty sculpture sitting on the stove while I continued to use the microwave. And part of me revels in people being appalled that I do that.
I still don’t understand the appallment.