Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist

You may recall that a rather geeky purchase of mine proved to be difficult to reconcile with American wiring. An electric-savvy friend of mine came over and looked at our box to see what might be necessary to get it running without a transformer; the box itself would probably have to be replaced, since it was bought second-hand off of Moses, but that would probably be something that the landlord would take care of given sufficient justification. Once the box was up to code, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal to put in a dedicated outlet for the kettle.

With a baby on the way, that was maybe sufficient justification to mention to my landlord, hey, a friend of mine checked out our fusebox and said that it probably wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to have an electrician bring it up to date. I did so, and the landlord (who has always been a very cool guy to us) said, sure, no problem, here’s the guy I usually use.

Well, the electrician came out and definitely found some wiring issues that needed fixing, and said, yep, I can have a conversation with the homeowner about the fusebox. He wasn’t opposed to putting in a dedicated outlet, but said, you know, it’s possible that there’s a different base that will let it run on US electricity — check with the manufacturer.

But then other big things happened, and it kind of fell of my radar for awhile.

Then Madelene left a comment on the original post saying that she’d gotten this working without any massive rewiring of everything. The secret? That the US-based Chef’s Choice uses the same manufacturer as Russell Hobbs, and markets a variant of the same kettle in North America. It’s not exactly the same — no blue lights, the handle is different, other cosmetic differences — but the important thing is that the Russell Hobbs kettle will fit on the base of the Chef’s Choice version.

A phone call to Chef’s Choice confirmed the availability of replacement bases, and today the box arrived.

Which brings me to the moment where perhaps you will decide that six weeks of fatherhood have already robbed me of my sanity — yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’m posting a video of water boiling. One thing you’ll notice right off is that on American electricity, the whole “boiling in under a minute” thing doesn’t happen — more like five. Oh well. It still works.