h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Was to get rid of my kitchen balance and weights before I left the shores of Blighty for the New World. What am I going to need those for, I thought. Everything there is measured in cups. And the larger weights of those two sets (imperial and metric) are pretty bloody heavy. And the balance itself isn't exactly small or easy to pack.

No matter that I was paying for shipping my stuff by volume rather than by weight. No matter that the imperial weights were the ones my mum had given me and were stamped with a crown and 'GVIR' in the little lead pellet fixed into the indentation underneath (that's George the Sixth, by the way). No matter that the balance itself was a really nice one I'd bought brand new some years earlier. Not too dissimilar from this http://shop.thamesway.com/ekmps/shops/thanmeswayfood/images/new-weylux-cast-iron-kitchen-balance-scales-inc-weights-935-p.jpg actually. In fact it might even have been that very model, but I keep thinking 'The Queensway', although that brings up no results in a web search.

And by the way, online retailers - a kitchen 'balance' and a kitchen 'scale' are not the same thing, so stop calling your scales balances, okay? It really messes things up when you're trying to search for one but not the other.

But after a few years I went out and bought an electronic kitchen scale, partly on Alton Brown's advice and partly because I'd bought a bunch of British cookery books with me. Weighing your ingredients really is best, especially when baking. It's a pretty whizz-bang affair, can weigh as little as an eighth of an ounce or a single gram and can be reset to zero after you add each ingredient for accurate weighing (the tare function). But the kitchen balance has one big advantage over it - it doesn't need batteries (and although I didn't have weights as small as an eighth of an ounce was every bit as accurate when used correctly).

So there I was few minutes ago weighing flour into my water and yeast, ready to begin mixing it into dough for a loaf of bread and the readout on the scale suddenly goes from '14oz' to 'Lo', and then goes blank. The batteries have run out And I was planning on using it this afternoon too, for the pastry on a steak and kidney pie.

All's not entirely lost. I can convert the weight of flour into cups and make the pastry that way, and the sticks of butter have volume measurements printed on the wrapping paper, plus they're 4oz each, so finding the right weight won't be hard.

But I'm still going to have to go and buy two new batteries for the scale, and they're not your average AA or AAA. Oh no, these are specialist batteries. Flat discs. Probably hard to find and probably pricey

In the words of Mr Brown... oh bother.

Okay, not so hard to find and not so pricey http://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Electronic-Batteries-batteries-Lithium/dp/B0002DSVS8/ref=sr_1_3/177-2189410-2055351?ie=UTF8&qid=1407855610&sr=8-3&keywords=panasonic+cr2032

Result

You can often find disc batteries in many grocery stores these days. That's a fairly common size, I believe. I have several things that take these annoying batteries and I'm often pleasantly surprised to find them at Kroger or Target.

I think that's what I'm going to do. Firstly it seems pretty silly buying something online that's only a couple of bucks - VISA are probably going to make more out of the purchase than the retailer. Secondly I don't care for Amazon any more (I know other online retailers are available, I just chose that link as an example). Thirdly I just called the local branch of Batteries Plus and they're selling a twin-pack for three times the Amazon price. I prefer to use local businesses whenever possible but Batteries Plus is a franchised national chain so I don't feel too bad about choosing Target over them. I just hope they have them in stock.

I'm exaggerating. The Amazon price is just under $3.00 and Batteries Plus quoted about $6.40 I think. Still going to check out Target though.

If you don't find them at Target right away, keep looking. They have a nasty habit of keeping their stock in multiple locations. They might have small subsets of their battery sizes in three or four areas around the store. Oddly, they do the same thing with shoe insoles. In their shoe department they only display a couple of choices. In the pharmacy department they carry about three times the selection.

Not so easy when you don't drive. There's a pretty decent Target about ten minutes away from Fort Gosho, on foot, but I'd have to go to the store locator to find where the next one is. There's an Office Depot I could try that's a little further away.

I mean within the same store!

Office Depot have a four-pack for $5.50 so it looks like I'll be paying themn a visit this afternoon. It'll mean I'll also be going past the place where I get my tea, and I am running low, so two birds with one stone

Plus, I'll have two spare batteries for when these ones run out... in about 10 years from now if they last as long as the ones that came with the scale