Hot water at the touch of a button. Welcome to … the Future!
We bought an electric kettle to save all y’all from our gas cooktop.
You’re welcome.
Now instead of firing up the KitchenAid Death Machine to heat water for the morning pour-over, we punch a button on this OXO Brew and hey presto! Hot water. It’s magic.
Of course, we get our power from a secret plant outside Grants that generates electricity by slow-roasting the homeless. It sells the meat to Mickey D’s. We like to think of it as a win-win.
Tags: climate change, OXO Brew
Mad Blog Media 
February 27, 2023 at 9:27 am |
February 27, 2023 at 10:25 am |
I’ve got an electric kettle from Breville. Works really fast. Up here, the electricity is generated in a carbon-neutral fashion too. We have large treadmills powered by the homeless and poor that are connected to dynamos. When the slave’s feet give out or they collapse, we grind up their bodies and feed them to the pigs and then sell the pork and bacon at Wholeazon Amafoods. Keeping the cost of living high, it is easy to just round up more homeless out from under bridges or in culverts to take their place on the treadmills. Bada bing, bada boom. Kills two birds, so to speak, with one stone.
On a less serious note, I don’t have any plans to buy a stove or oven till this one gives out and then will see what the market looks like. It is a very nice Frigidaire, the temperature is true, and was here when we bought the house and works wonderfully. Unless I shoot it or Martin Heinrich’s Stove Police come for it, it will likely outlast me. And last time around up in Los Alamos, I replaced a semi-functional electric stove/oven with a gas one since at the time, in the oughts, most of the electricity up there was generated by coal power up in Four Corners. So I figured that natural gas was a few steps up from coal as far as “saving the environment” or whatever it is we claim we are doing as we empty out Mead and Powell.
https://www.inkstain.net/2023/02/deadpool-diaries-the-law-is-an-ass/
February 27, 2023 at 11:52 am |
Yeah, replacing the gas cooktop here is not high on the hit parade.
I like to think that we may be a little less of a threat to Gaia than the average family, mostly because we didn’t have kids. Over our 32 years together we must have consumed fewer resources than Ma, Pa, Buddy and Sis. Or so I hope, anyway.
John Fleck writes a nice piece, doesn’t he? He seems to me like someone who’s trying to figure stuff out based on the current predicament instead of claiming he has all the answers based on preconceived notions.
February 27, 2023 at 7:25 pm |
Fleck is really smart and he does try to figure stuff out rather than vomit out the latest political groupthink. I’ve been getting his Inkstain updates for a while. It really makes one churn. Like you, we will leave no trace, not having dropped any rug rats along the way. And I wish to be composted and buried along with my rifles.
Lifecycle costs are important. If I had nothing in the way of cooking and traveling implements and had to buy shit, sure, an induction stove with the right iron cookware and an e-car, if I were not going very far, make much sense. Presuming, of course the roof panels or grid could handle it. But having already invested in All This Crap, it usually makes more sense to wear it out than to just pay someone to junk it and put that industrial system in China to work making new shit. We are long past a society of people who make their own shit, as the bike folks used to say.
February 27, 2023 at 1:46 pm |
If you want to give yourself a permanent brain cramp, you know it locks up and won’t work, try to calculate the life cycle, mine to scrapyard, carbon footprint of anything, especially a Corolla versus a Prius.
Tip of the day, but you probably know this, if you cramp on the bike chew two Tums. Magic is what.
February 27, 2023 at 2:43 pm |
I’ve been trying to repair rather than replace. I have two 2014 MacBook Pros that are in pretty good shape (knock on wood), and if one fails I have the other. The 13-incher needs more storage but that’s low priority; I offload large files to an external drive.
We drive old cars — 2005 Subaru Forester and 2011 Honda CR-V — and keep them maintained.
The large kitchen machinery is elderly but still limping along. The electric ovens need replacing but that won’t happen until they actually fail. They require a little Kentucky windage as regards temp but I can live with that. The little things that fail, like toasters and coffeemakers, annoy me. Can’t do much about the toaster but the coffemaker is an Aeropress now. Not much there to fail, and the parts are easily replaced.
The Toshiba TV dates to 2008, I think; the sound system, a hodgepodge of Sony and Yamaha, may be even older. They still work, and the new ones all watch and listen to you more than you do to them, so no hurry to step into that brave new world.
I did go a little loco on audio gear a couple years back when I was so enthusiastic about podcasting, but Herself has sold off most of it, so it didn’t end up in an arroyo somewhere. Ditto the camera gear; the iPhone is good enough for my limited skillset and purposes. But I kept three video cams — a GoPro Hero 5, a Canon Vixia Mini X, and a Panasonic NC-V770 — because they all do very different things.
February 27, 2023 at 3:38 pm |
See you are smart.
February 27, 2023 at 3:44 pm |
Having just retired from the appliance manufacturing biz, I can say that my next upgrade is an induction range and electric convection oven. Yes, I’m a guy who loves a big gas flame under my wok, but induction works there too, and before you say it, yes, you have to replace your cookware. Of course your trusty cast iron works great. The warm up time is tiny and heat control is precise. It’s an easy learn.
February 27, 2023 at 4:16 pm |
I’m ashamed to admit it, but we have only two pieces of cast iron in the arsenal — an ancient Wagner Ware skillet and a La Creuset 24 enameled Dutch oven.
Mostly I cook in some old Emeril stainless steel, made by All-Clad Back in the Day®. A whole lot cheaper than the real All-Clad and it’s held up really well over the years. Bam!
February 28, 2023 at 9:56 am |
I’ve got two iron pans and a griddle. Nothing like searing Ahi on a slab of pure iron. I’ll admit I have a small Pyrex double boiler that is indispensable (for me) to successfully pull off hollandaise. I need a soft low boil, and I ain’t skilled enough to do it without the visual. Of course, with induction you can get these nifty ferrous discs to put on the burner to translate the magnetic energy into heat.
February 27, 2023 at 11:55 am |
I finally bought an electric kettle a year back for the same reason you did. What the hell was I waiting for? The Brits make tea 50 times a day (if you watch PBS shows you’ll see what I mean. Anytime anyone gets near their house or office they make tea) and THEY always use em. Tried two different electric hot plates that are supposed to work with any/all cookwear and I can’t cook worth a tinkers damn with them. Anyone have any recs? Fekking Amazon reviews are worthless. Everybody loves everything…I have no faith in them.
February 27, 2023 at 12:05 pm |
I haven’t tried any of the electric-cooktop gizmos that seem to be popping up all over the place.
The Wirecutter dudes like the Duxtop induction cookers (both single- and double-burner), but I always hear about issues with cookware on induction burners.
They’re inexpensive enough to experiment with, though. And I guess you could sell ’em on eBay if you hated ’em.