Microwave your brain

As usual, Austin had some great questions on his weekly jump  start blog.http://moviewriternyu.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/jump-start-your-brain-microwaves-friend-or-foe

Since the dinosaurs died out shortly after I was born and I still remember what a tea kettle looks like, I will endeavor to answer his questions

My grandmothers type of wood stove

How in the world did we ever survive without microwaves? I didn’t use one until I was in my 20’s. Did you know that if your microwave isn’t working right you can fry your brain?

Did people just not eat in those dark days before it was invented? First they had to grow the crops, then kill live stock (skinning, plucking, dissecting). Hey, is this making you hungry, too?

Did divorced men starve to death? No. Their sister, mother or daughter cooked for them. If no on liked them, they were left to die.

Did college kids beg for meals on the street? No, college kids begged people not to make them eat at the cafeteria. The gravy always looked like a muddy football field after a rain. Tasted like it, too. However, delivery pizza has been around for at least 60 years and if all else failed there was always peanut butter and crackers.

Does that explain why Americans were much skinnier back in the day? We were so much skinnier because we didn’t have video games and our parental control consisted of turning off the radio or the TV or whapping you good if you misbehaved. There wasn’t much to do beside run, jump, play, and stay out of the way.

It’s not like I can’t hold my own in the kitchen, but did we really once cook all our meals on the stove or in the oven? How did that work? It isn’t that hard. You cook a pot roast with veggies on the slow cooker, heat it up as much as you want to eat in a small pan on the stove and eat it out of a pan you put on top of an oven pad. Basically, you cook up a big batch and eat the leftovers all week.

Did people eat dinner at like 8:00 every night? Only if you watch family oriented series from the 1950’s. The rest of us ate when we were hungry.

Where did they find the time to cook and still work a full time job? Women stayed at home. Men went out to work. Some women wanted to work. Some men wanted to stay at home with the kids. So now what to we have? A society where both parents have to work and nobody’s home. But kids still have 3 months off during summer. Why? Because 100 years ago they were needed to harvest crops 12 hours a day, an activity that tends to make you skinny.

When’s the last time you went a day without using your microwave? I use it to cook the meals I make at home on the stove and take to work.  That saves me $5 a day so I don’t have to eat peanut butter sandwiches all month.

When’s the last time you actually baked something in your oven? If that includes the toaster oven, it was an hour ago.

Do you know for a fact that the burners on your stove actually work? My whistling tea kettle attests to the fact that it does.

Why would you use something that needs to preheat? Try making cookies without doing that first and you can see the difference between the first batch and the next.

How did we know what temperature to turn the oven to so our meal would cook properly? By following the directions located on the recipe or found anywhere on the Internet at recipe websites.

Why don’t ovens have little buttons with the settings on them like microwaves? It’s according to the oven. The more expensive ones have it. As far as I’m concerned, the more bells and whistles on the damned things the more stuff there is on it that’s going to break.

Can you even remember a world where popcorn poppers were necessary? I still own one.

Who, other than barbarians, still heats up a slice of cold pizza in an oven? Wait a minute while I fetch my shield and lance. Oh…pizza. It tastes better from the oven than being microwaved. Looks like mine is all done. Anyone got an axe?

In case you’ve never seen one–this is a whistling tea kettle

Does anyone even wait for a kettle to whistle anymore to have a cup of tea? Yes. Every day of my life.

Why use anything but a microwave? It doesn’t take that much longer to boil the same amount of water that you heat in a microwave.

Have microwaves spoiled us? Yes. They’re killing us, too.

Has the kindly kitchen companion made us forget how to cook? Are we too dependent upon it for survival? If all the microwaves in the world stopped working, would we starve to death? Is this the plan of Robot High Command? Is this how The Machines finally enslave us and begin The Robot Apocalypse???   Hold on another minute. I found my lance and shield, but where the hell is my aluminum hat? Anyone seen it lying around? Damn! I forgot I flattened it out to heat up the pizza. What was the question—oh, yeah, we’re all going to die!!!!