Not recommended.

[rivka]

I singed the hem of my sweater while making tea this morning.

As best as I can figure out, it slipped under the teakettle and into the flame while I was stretched up trying to extract a teabag from a box in the cabinet over the stove.

Fortunately, it didn't actually catch fire - it just browned, and smelled horrible. But it made for a pretty troubling mental image. (Sweater in flames! Burned baby! I've never used a fire extinguisher!)

This is why British folks use electric kettles, isn't it?

Comments

[mcduff.livejournal.com]

Yup. C'mon, USA, enter the twentieth-century of tea-making technology!

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

If you're freaked about it, keep a box of baking soda by the stove. Less fumes. Also, clapping a pot lid on whatever it is almost always puts it right out.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, who could cope with a flame before having their tea?

Also, in Britain the electricity isn't this wimpy 110 stuff, it's 240, which boils your kettle fast. Even at 110, it's quicker to boil water in the kettle than on the hob.

[popefelix.livejournal.com]

You could always get one of those electric kettles like Alton Brown has. I've been thinking about getting one when I can afford it.

[popefelix.livejournal.com]

What's a hob?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It could be two things, but the one I meant here was the top part of the stove, where the burners are, whether gas or electric.

You don't call that a hob? What do you call that?

(The other thing it could be is a friendly house-elf that does the housework for you. If you have one, leave them food, but not clothes. Clothes offend them.)

(Oh, and a hobnob is a chocolate covered oatmeal b/i/s/c/u/i/t/ cookie.)

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Over this side, it's a burner.

[balmofgilead.livejournal.com]

top part of stove where burners are = stovetop around here.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You don't call that a hob? What do you call that?

I call it the stovetop. There's an American brand of packaged dressing called "Stovetop Stuffing," by which Americans are given to understand that it's cooked on a burner rather than in the oven.

The other thing it could be is a friendly house-elf that does the housework for you.

Is there a British distinction between a hob and a brownie? Because I would call a housework-performing house-elf a brownie. In fact, that's where the youngest level of Girl Scouts gets their name - they're supposed to be learning about helpfulness at home, and so forth.

(All together now, those of you who were Brownie Girl Scouts:

Twist me and turn me
And show me an elf,
I looked in the mirror
And saw..."

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I don't know Alton Brown, but I got an electric teakettle from cooking.com, and it's really nice. Four cups of water boiling in slightly over two minutes. How much over? I don't know... what I'll do is put my teapot in the microwave for two minutes while the water is heating, so I don't need to warm the pot and then measure the water, during which time the water is cooling.

But, I do know that it's generally less than eye-rolling, foot-tapping time, and definitely less than screaming "will you hurry up and boil already!" time... except when I'm in a really bad mood, and on days like that, the amount of energy required to boil my tea water quickly enough to satisfy me would probably vaporize a city block.

If you don't drink a quart of tea in the morning, then you'll have a significantly shorter wait. (Unless, of course, you drink more...)

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Canadians, too, actually.

-J

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Erp... yeah. It's good you're OK.

Thank goodness

[samtosha.livejournal.com]

you are okay.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

I call the top part of the oven the "oventop", and only the actual burner (or hotplate, on an electric oven) the "hob". I ask my son to put something on the "front left hob" or the "back right hob", for instance. I hadn't consciously come across someone using "hob" to mean the whole oventop, although I suppose it wouldn't always be obvious from context that they were doing so.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Eeep! Not so much with the singing of Rivkas, thankyou. I would have been totally freaked out, had it been me, and unable to type for days.

I mananged to get to about where you are in my first pregnanacy when I started closing the hem of my jackets in doors. My grandmother finally said, gently, "Back up, lamb, you're taking up more space than you're used to."

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Hobs have four burners!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Myself... though the version I learned in Brownies was:

Twist me and turn me
And show me the elf,
I looked in the water
and there saw... myself.

The difference between a hob and a brownie is that brownies are cutesy and made-up and I only ever heard about them in Brownies, whereas hobs are real. No, stop, the real difference is that hobs are from the North of England and brownies from the South, and I used to live in the North. Also hobs can turn mischievous if you give them clothes, they can become boggarts, they have the unchancy fairy nature, they're not just conveniences.

"Stovetop" as a name works if it's actually the top of the stove, but not if you have an ultra-clever kitchen like my friends S&P, where the hob is separate.

Hob is an old word, which makes it strange that it should have died out in US usage, which usually clings to the old.

When Yeats in the poem "Fairy Child" talks about the delights of the real world, one of the images he uses is "and the kettle on the hob sing peace into your breast", and my Auntie Doris (who cooked on a Victorian fire with ovens until she died in 1976, mainly out of the same sort of stubbornness in which I am still writing in DOS on a 286) used to call the griddle and the whole side of the fire bit the hob. You couldn't call that a stovetop -- there wasn't a stove.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"This is why British folks use electric kettles, isn't it?"

No. It's because electricity is traditionally the most reliable -- and most widely available -- utility.

B

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

Yikesy-yikesy-yikes, as Mike would say! I am glad you (and the kidlet) are okay!

[ckd]

I'm glad you're all okay. We have a proper British-style but American-voltage electric kettle...that happens when your in-laws are all British.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I solve this problem by making a full pot and keeping it on the stövchen.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Not so much with the singing of Rivkas

She actually sounds like she'd have quite a nice voice!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

This is a point of English that's eluded me so far.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Range.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Damn. I was hoping that stövchen would translate to something more clear when I saw it here, rather than in the e-mail copy.

What is a stövchen?

I've actually considered doing what I heard some working class British folks do, putting tea in a thermos and letting it steep however long it wants to. I like my tea strong.

(Unless you like tannin, don't do this with green tea. Yick!)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

This is why wool sweaters are good, or so I'm told. They smolder rather than melt or burn.

(Glad you're okay.)

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Basically, it's a tea-warmer; a small stand that you place your teapot atop, with a tea light underneath. (I'm fairly sure that this is why they're called tea lights.) I had a devil of a time finding mine, but now I've seen them in specialty tea shops.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Hob = range = stovetop. It usually consists of 2 or 4 burners, in homes. (A big restaurant kitchen might have 6 or 8.) Sometimes there's enough heatproof material between them to put down a pot.) Burners can be gas or electric, and the electric ones can have a range without an oven. In some of the apartments rented by poor students in Ann Arbor, the "kitchens" have a small refrigerator and a 2-burner range, but there's no oven. At the other end of the socioeconomic scale, cooking magazines have pictures of fancy ovens under plain countertops, or mounted higher than you could work at them with a range on top (so you don't have to bend over to put stuff in them.) Extravagent, of course, but some people are.

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

My kids got me a hot water heater thats installed under the sink. I took a handiworker to drill through the sink top and connect the wiring and plumbing, but it was well worth it. At the touch of a button I get up to a quart of 190 degree water to use with tea, instant coffee, soups, noodles or whatever I want, without resorting to the stove, coffee pot or microwave. If you use a lot of hot water, but not often enough to keep a pot going constantly, you might want to consider one for yourself.

[ailbhe]

Hob is also the name for the bit of building next to the open chimney / hearth thing, where you can sit, or leave a pot of tea to stay warm, or sit bread to prove, or whatever - it's built into the stone of the house.

Someday when I'm well and thinking I'll explain it better.

Cordless electric kettles.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It never occurred to me that it might be pregnancy-related. But now that you say that, yeah, in fact the hem of that sweater doesn't exactly hang where it used to.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

My wool sweaters don't so much fit these days.

[dragon3.livejournal.com]

cooktop

[rivka.livejournal.com]

"Stovetop" as a name works if it's actually the top of the stove, but not if you have an ultra-clever kitchen like my friends S&P, where the hob is separate.

*thinks*

I think I would still call it a stovetop. "She's got a little galley kitchen, and there's just a stovetop, no oven."

Maybe.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You are the beaver!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Someday when I'm well and thinking I'll explain it better.

I'm just happy to see you around.

I know I've encountered what you're talking about in books, but I don't think I've ever seen one.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

My goodness. Not the sort of thing you expect to hear from your girlfriend?

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. Do you feel objectified now?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

190 degrees is not actually hot enough for tea, but I'm intrigued by the concept anyway.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Baby, you can objectify me anytime. ;-)

-J

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

We have one of these. The almost-boiling water is great for use as-is, and it also boils very quickly in the electric kettle for tea or for instant noodles (which also don't work with not-quite-boiling water.)