Today I received a call from my wife that our microwave had started “sparking”. She had already called the manufacturer and explained that it’s taken a beating recently due to the seemingly endless 4min cycles of baby bottle sterilization. As expected they claim misuse while we claim faulty unit but at least they’ll supply a loan while they look to repair. But that leaves me with the dilemma of no microwave for 2 and a bit days! I’m sure many of you are probably thinking “Why are you using a microwave anyway” but truth be told I haven’t stopped using it since my pre-gardening / cooking / bachelor days.
Beyond baby bottle sterilization it’s used for defrosting (which is all reality should be called defreeze, the frost isn’t my problem, it’s that it’s frozen!) meat, cooking rice and even steaming vege’s (yes I know this is bad). However despite the inconvenience I’m taking this as an opportunity to move away from the (apparently – still need to research it properly) dreaded microwave.
Which brings me to day 1 – no microwave. What did we have for dinner. Quite simple really and on reflection it makes sense to do this more often:
- Pan fried pork loin chops – bought today so they weren’t frozen which is probably a good thing.
- Oven roasted root vege’s and capsicum – always a crowd favourite and we ended up with 2 lots of vegetable delivery from Aussie Farmers Direct (trialling them) and an accidental top up from the grocery store.
- Steamed broccoli and bok choy.
It’s the steamed vege’s that brings the a-ha moment for me. I pulled out my bamboo steamer and I’m pretty sure that with the help of boiled water from the kettle I had them steamed up in about the same time as a microwave would take. And assuming microwaves aren’t ideal I had the desired outcome without additional effort.
I’m still yet to boil up and sterilise the baby bottles old school like my parents did but it’s certainly an eye opening experiment to go without the microwave.
Do you use a microwave? If you’ve given it up why? and how have you found the transition.
Let’s see how day 2 goes. Stay tuned!
Geek, Garden and Cook 
Love the blog. You might find interesting the best mode of cooking to retain all nutrients within vegetables is actually the microwave – one of the tips the Le Cordon Bleu chefs gives the students.
I myself don’t use the microwave much these days as my turntable is broken. I take a lot out of the freezer early in the day for defrosting. The most recenty use was to reheat a bowl of soup.
Great to see you learning to live without the microwave. I ditched ours about a year ago to great upset from the family! ‘But, but, I need it to heat up my coffee!’ ‘How am I going to reheat leftovers?’ ‘Mum, that’s just not fair!!’ Anyway, whilst it did take a little adjusting to new methods and routines, and I copped alot of flack along the way, a year later we don’t miss it (ok, I don’t miss it!!). I have just always felt intuitively that there is something NQR about zapping one’s food. To be honest, however, I did the research and didn’t come up with too many rational facts against it. People haven’t been dropping in droves from cancer from using their microwave ovens. Nonetheless, whilst I like scientific evidence as well as the next person, I am not ashamed to say I am sticking with intuition on this one and we are staying microwave free.
If you really, really want to have some radical cooking fun get yourself a solar cooker – they’re brilliant!