Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Linda Buys a New Kitchen Scale

Linda makes considerable use of a kitchen scale for many of her recipes.  She regularly uses the scale to measure flour, butter and other ingredients.  She has had a very nice OXO scale for several years that she keeps here in Egypt.  

 

Unfortunately, it became a bit erratic for a day or so and then simply stopped working.  New batteries needed?  No, that didn't help.

I found a helpful YouTube video that showed the secret screws that are the keys to getting inside.  I came to the conclusion that we have the same problem as the author of that video - a bad on/off switch; but, I don't have soldering/de-soldering tools nor a VOM (Volt-Ohm-Meter) in my Egypt tool kit.  So we packed up the scale to take home to work on for next year and took advantage of a visit to "Scale Street."  What I call Scale Street is a block of small shops selling all manner of scales (mostly for retail vendors) just off el Moez street behind Khan el-Khalili - I blogged about it here ten years ago.  

We weren't sure we would find a kitchen scale since most of the shops are devoted to larger commercial models.  We had no luck at our first stop, although the owner thought he could find one for about 150 EGP (less than four dollars) and left for a few minutes to look around.  We continued along the street and decided to try another shop. As soon as we walked inside and saw all the professional meat and cheese cutters we thought, "Well, this is the wrong place to ask."  Turned out to be the perfect place to find a small kitchen scale. The vendor had two scales of just the size we wanted.

 

The shop owner opened a box, took out the scale, inserted two AA batteries and showed us that it indeed worked. We bought it for 200 EGP (five dollars.) The box indicated that two AA batteries were included but those were either discarded due to old age or merely removed for another use. Oh well, we can always buy our own batteries.

It's a nice scale even though it lacks some of the extra features of Linda's previous scale. Her old scale displayed the imperial system in pound and ounces, the new one only uses ounces - but she mostly uses the metric measure so that is not a big problem.

How to test it for accuracy?  Let's put this 36.5 gram Kit Kat bar on it and see what the scale says?

We also bought another kilogram of butter today.  That weighed in at 1026 grams on the new scale.  Accurate enough for baking, I believe.

The cookie lady is back in business!

By the way, the new SF-400 scale is available on Amazon at home for between ten and fourteen dollars with decent reviews.

Checking Amazon-Egypt (which we have not tried to use) there are at least 40 identical appearing models with prices ranging from 98 to 256 EGP - and most come with some very bad 1-star reviews.

And about that Kit Kat bar - did you notice that it is coffee flavor?  They are delicious! I don't think they are available back home.  They come from the U.A.E, manufactured by Nestle in Dubai.