Life Before Microwave Ovens

What on earth did we do before we all relied so heavily on the Microwave? I'm currently going through withdrawal. I've had to wrack my brain to think of how I heated leftovers.....how I cooked a Lean Cuisine. Our microwave has been acting strange for about 1.5 years or so. It started with the thing not being able to keep the time on the display and just went down hill from there. Occasionally it would turn itself on when no one was in the room, so we took to unplugging it while we weren't using it and that worked OK until 2 weeks ago. We'd plug it in, but it wouldn't respond to any buttons; the lights come on, but no one is home. I think the time has come to admit that we can get nothing more out of this microwave.

So the other day I had to pick up some milk at the store and since my favorite Lean Cuisine Chicken Club Panini was on sale, I bought one for my lunch that day. It wasn't till I pulled the thing out of the freezer to "nuke" it that it dawned on me that the microwave option for food is no longer available in my home. I had to do a quick scan of my decades old memories to see how to deal with frozen food. Oh yeaaaaah. Turned the oven on, popped my meal in there, and had to wait 25 minutes till it was done! I had to guess on the oven temperature because the box assumes you have a microwave in which to cook the meal and doesn't offer oven cooking as an option.

I gotta admit, this really stinks not having a microwave. You don't realize how much you rely on an appliance or electronic till you are suddenly without it. I'm constantly thawing out meat for dinner or frozen marinara sauce I've made, plus I heat water in there for Eric's oatmeal or for making tea each morning. Now I have to boil it?? That'll take, like, 5 minutes! Reheat leftovers without a microwave?! Good grief.....it's really much greener to own a microwave. Think about it - to reheat leftovers, you either have to fire up the oven or burner (most of us have gas and we all know how expensive that is), then after you're done cooking your leftovers, you have to use water (and more gas if you're using hot water) to clean up the pans you used to cook the food. That's a lot of natural resources, don't you think? Now if you'd just used the microwave, you could've reheated the food in the storage container, used a little electricity, and poof, you're done. That justifies the purchase of a new one, doesn't it????