O Pioneers!

Our microwave broke on Friday. It won't heat anything at all. It does still spin the turntable around and light up, but that's only entertaining up to a point, really. I had to heat water in a pan, on the stove, to prepare my non-fortifying, caffein-less hot chocolate (no chocolate added).
It got me to thinking about the early pioneers and how they coped with no modern conveniences.

I remember we were the first family I know to buy a microwave oven. It sat on the counter huge and hulking and intimidating every soul around it. My mother was afraid we'd get radiation poisoning and grow new ears while glowing a faint greenish color. We kids just wanted to see the thing work, who cared what it actually did, just turn it on. The first thing to go in was a simple mug of water. After much noise but not much time out came a piping hot mug of hot water? Well there was no instant hot chocolate powder way back then so we just stared silently at this new world of faster heat. My mom the first to speak, "Ed, we have a perfectly good kettle to heat our water with, we certainly don't need that thing! Get back, children."

We didn't use it much the first year. Soon after, other people began to buy microwaves and use them for re-heating and water boiling. Then came the discovery of microwave cooking; by Jove you can cook in that thing , it's fast and you don't have to worry about it blowing up like the pressure cooker, painting the walls with our delectable supper. There were new plastic cooking utensils designed for microwve cooking, cook books, and even TV dinners were now delegated to the microwave. The age of machination indeed, baby! What an absolute thrill to be on the cutting edge of gadget history. We were there, we led the way O Pioneers!

And now? I can't even thaw meat without that thing. Leave the meat out of the freezer? Are you crazy, what about germs? Re-Heat carry out dinners in the oven? ,are you daft? Yes I must struggle through just as my Grandmother and Mother have done before me. At least until the repairman comes.