"Get it while it's unbelievably hot, kids!"
We recently lost a good friend; a friend who had been with us for the past two years; a friend who has been indispensable to me in preparing Abbie’s meals; a friend who always did a fine job in very little time without making a lot of noise except for a big long beep when finished. Our microwave is out for repairs, and it’s left me in a tough spot until it returns in four to six weeks.
Our microwave actually broke a couple of weeks ago, we just finally took it for repairs Thursday. Nothing major was wrong with it like the magic elves living inside stopped heating food or giant sparks started shooting out the back, the LCD screen just turned dark. I could still decipher the display, but it required a lot of contorting, squinting, and turning off lights. This made reading time-based functions, like how much remained on the timer or the time of day, very difficult if not impossible. Otherwise the microwave worked fine enough that I thought I could limp along until, I don’t know, maybe until the magic elves living inside stopped heating food, possibly because of a strike.
Being the efficient (i.e. cheap) daddy that I am, I make my own baby food by pouring mashed fruits and shredded vegetables and chicken into ice cube trays, and then freeze them. For meals I pop a few frozen food cubes in a cup and heat it in the microwave, so you can see how much I use the microwave. Thursday night I started making her dinner as usual, throwing the food in the microwave and keying in 67 seconds. Then I went to rest on the bed for a couple minutes since Abbie was still napping. When I rose, I discovered that I must have inadvertently keyed in 667 (or possibly 677) because the microwave was still whirring away. Picking up after a 1200-watt microwave chars a couple ounces of food was not fun, ranking somewhere below even waiting six hours in line to buy a Harry Potter book at midnight. Smoke infested the entire kitchen leaving a stench that still lingers, and the inside of the microwave smells worse than the inside of Moises Alou’s batting gloves. The cup the food was in was destroyed; apparently liquid seeped into a crack in the cup, and when it expanded after being ridiculously overheated it blew the cup apart. The explosion probably would have been cool if I had been watching, and it was just as well since no way would I have wanted to clean super-burnt food from the cup.
That night we uttered a phrase man has seldom spoken, “thank god we bought the extended warranty,” and took the microwave in for service. The helpful technicians verified that no, the display is not working properly, and yes, the inside does stink, before informing us that it’s nothing they can fix in the store. It has to be sent to Minneapolis, possibly by horse drawn carriage, because we won’t see it again for at least the next month.
I realized that my elaborate backup cooking system of boiling water would not suffice for a month and spent yesterday searching for a new microwave to limp us through the next month. I first checked to see if our complex had a spare microwave we could borrow, but no luck there. When I explained our predicament to the housing director, she did helpfully suggest that we might as well go to the river and clean our laundry on the rocks if we’re going to try cooking for a 13-month-old without a microwave. Next I ventured out to the various discount stores dotting the metro to buy the finest microwave I could find for under $30. The one I choose is about half the size and power of our regular microwave, and it lacks some of the amenities we’ve come to expect on modern microwaves, like an LCD display, a lighted interior, a door that opens easily, and radiation shielding. It does what I need it to do, though, which is heat food, so I think I can live with it for a month. As a bonus, it doesn’t stink.
Our microwave actually broke a couple of weeks ago, we just finally took it for repairs Thursday. Nothing major was wrong with it like the magic elves living inside stopped heating food or giant sparks started shooting out the back, the LCD screen just turned dark. I could still decipher the display, but it required a lot of contorting, squinting, and turning off lights. This made reading time-based functions, like how much remained on the timer or the time of day, very difficult if not impossible. Otherwise the microwave worked fine enough that I thought I could limp along until, I don’t know, maybe until the magic elves living inside stopped heating food, possibly because of a strike.
Being the efficient (i.e. cheap) daddy that I am, I make my own baby food by pouring mashed fruits and shredded vegetables and chicken into ice cube trays, and then freeze them. For meals I pop a few frozen food cubes in a cup and heat it in the microwave, so you can see how much I use the microwave. Thursday night I started making her dinner as usual, throwing the food in the microwave and keying in 67 seconds. Then I went to rest on the bed for a couple minutes since Abbie was still napping. When I rose, I discovered that I must have inadvertently keyed in 667 (or possibly 677) because the microwave was still whirring away. Picking up after a 1200-watt microwave chars a couple ounces of food was not fun, ranking somewhere below even waiting six hours in line to buy a Harry Potter book at midnight. Smoke infested the entire kitchen leaving a stench that still lingers, and the inside of the microwave smells worse than the inside of Moises Alou’s batting gloves. The cup the food was in was destroyed; apparently liquid seeped into a crack in the cup, and when it expanded after being ridiculously overheated it blew the cup apart. The explosion probably would have been cool if I had been watching, and it was just as well since no way would I have wanted to clean super-burnt food from the cup.
That night we uttered a phrase man has seldom spoken, “thank god we bought the extended warranty,” and took the microwave in for service. The helpful technicians verified that no, the display is not working properly, and yes, the inside does stink, before informing us that it’s nothing they can fix in the store. It has to be sent to Minneapolis, possibly by horse drawn carriage, because we won’t see it again for at least the next month.
I realized that my elaborate backup cooking system of boiling water would not suffice for a month and spent yesterday searching for a new microwave to limp us through the next month. I first checked to see if our complex had a spare microwave we could borrow, but no luck there. When I explained our predicament to the housing director, she did helpfully suggest that we might as well go to the river and clean our laundry on the rocks if we’re going to try cooking for a 13-month-old without a microwave. Next I ventured out to the various discount stores dotting the metro to buy the finest microwave I could find for under $30. The one I choose is about half the size and power of our regular microwave, and it lacks some of the amenities we’ve come to expect on modern microwaves, like an LCD display, a lighted interior, a door that opens easily, and radiation shielding. It does what I need it to do, though, which is heat food, so I think I can live with it for a month. As a bonus, it doesn’t stink.
posted by Matt at
9:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home