It’s just a tiny help, but when it is really hot, like today in Downstate New York, and you’ve spent the whole day driving home from Upstate New York (we’re talking about nine hours with stops and traffic) so that even your eight-year-old agrees it’s too hot to cook and almost too hot to eat, well, macaroni and cheese from a box (nominally organic, but I cannot fool even myself on how stupid that it is to think it is any better than Kraft) is a good option.
However boiling water is a hot operation, so I use the electric kettle to boil the water then transfer the water to a pot on the stove. Electric kettles are common in England (my dear friend and kitchen co-conspirator, Kate, turned me on to them) for tea and such and they generate a lot less heat than a stovetop kettle or pot. I also love that they turn off automatically when the water boils; in my current life full of distractions I often forget I’ve put water to boil, so it is much safer!
Electric kettles shut off automatically when the water boils, so they are safer than stovetop boiling!
Hot, Cheap & Easy 
I’ve never used an electric kettle but they sound like a good idea. It is way too easy to put water on to boil and get distracted and forget about it.
Yes Karen, even with my limited counter space, I think this one rates a corner of the kitchen!
Thanks for the visit!
Electric kettles are normal in Britain – boiling water on the stove would be considered unusual 😉
I love them. They were very hard to find just ten years ago, but they are becoming more common now. Excellent for the office as well.
Wonderful to hear from you. I’ve been so swamped I haven’t been around for a while!!!
They’ve been popular here since the 60s – these days I don’t know a single person here without one. Their absence was something I did notice when I lived in America – there I had a whistling kettle that sat on the stove. I really liked it because it reminded me of my childhood 🙂