I did it!  I finally read my last negative story about microwave safety. I read my last story about Russia banning them and Good Housekeeping saying there is nothing wrong with them and debunking.com saying that anyone who thinks that eating microwaved food is a safety hazard is a conspiracy theorist and on and on yipyapyuk……  I took the damned thing and threw it to the curb!

First of all the space it’s taking up is ridiculous.  Why do I have this giant electronic box taking up all this space in my kitchen to defrost frozen vegetables? To melt butter? to heat up left overs so they taste like crap?  Why?   I remember back int he 80’s when the Microwave oven was all the rage. I had just gotten married and we went to the store and got the biggest one we could find that had the most buttons to push with names of food on it like popcorn and baked potato and DEFROST…..omg –just the thought that I could defrost dinner in no time at all was enough to send me off into efficiency heaven!  Well, in the last 30 years I remember defrosting food a handful of times and the reason I didn’t do it was because it always sort of cooked the outside of whatever I was defrosting and made the meat or chicken so unappetizing and hard around the edges after I finally cooked whatever it was.

So after thinking about it I asked myself what did I use the microwave oven for?  Well, lets see -I microwaved popcorn for a long long time until I woke up from the dead and realized that the reason I felt sick after eating that garbage was because it was just that –garbage. I would feel actual constriction in my chest every time I ate it –but some how, after doing it for so many years, I think I forgot that you could actually take a handful of nice organic corn kernels and throw them into some virgin olive oil and get some nice fluff that wouldn’t contribute to an early death or a slow kill.  Here —The Food Babe will tell you every reason why this crap will kill you and it’s in the bag.

Ok, what else did I use it for? Heating the water for my morning tea.  That’s right –putting a cup of water in the microwave for 2 minutes and 30 seconds every single day was the reason I had this giant electronic box on my counter taking up precious space.  Nothing more nothing less.  I don’t cook frozen dinners….I usually only make fresh vegetables….I cook a lot of things that cook slowly on the stove or for hours in my oven…..and that is the key word –OVEN!  Ovens can heat, broil, bake , melt and even dehydrate!  I actually sliced up fresh vegetables from my garden last summer and I put them in my oven with olive oil and sea salt and cooked them on 200 degrees for like 5 hours and I got the most delicious dried vegetables you can imagine.  Ovens are great –get some nice cast iron pots and pans and find out how great your oven can be to you and how wonderful food can cook whether you think you have the time or not.  What does it take –5 minutes to boil some water? Get a nice cast iron teapot and it will take 2 minutes and 30 seconds and you don’t have to wonder why even your tea taste like dirty water.  As Nadia Arumugam from The Chew will tell you

“a proper cup of black tea must be made with water that’s come to a rolling boil. A kettle is designed to heat water evenly to 212 degrees Fahrenheit….But microwaves don’t heat water evenly, so the boiling process is difficult to control. Microwave ovens shoot tiny waves into the liquid at random locations, causing the water molecules at those points to vibrate rapidly. If the water isn’t heated for long enough, the result is isolated pockets of very hot or boiling water amid a larger body of water that’s cooler. Such water may misleadingly exhibit signs of boiling despite not being a uniform 212 degrees.”

There is a lot of controversy concerning the microwave oven.  A little girl did a school project showing how watering plants with regular tap water vs. water that was microwaved (and cooled) killed the plant over time.  There are now a myriad of videos showing this sort of thing and just as many debunking them. Snopes, of course, says it’s lies all lies (and if Snopes says something is true or false –that is all you need to fact check, correct? lol).  Mercola and Oz and the Health Ranger say microwaves are no good. The World Health Organization and the FDA say they are perfectly fine…..   Well, guess what –these days I tend to put my faith and trust in alternative science and not those government organizations that are supposed to be looking out for us lol…..  can you say Aspartame? GMO food?  Yeah, I trust the FDA to give me good advice 🙂

Anyway, whether it be for health concerns or not —I threw out my microwave oven and guess what….
LOOK AT ALL THE SPACE I HAVE!  Now I can use the counter space for rolling out dough for pie-making or cookies. I can sit down and read my cook books and have a cup of tea. I can organize my kitchen items and make room for canisters to put beans or flour…. the possibilities are endless!  I feel like the albatross in the room is on my curb and I’ve simplified my life for 2015.   I just don’t understand why I needed this machine in my life to begin with.  Marketing sure makes us do and get lots of things that we really don’t need and may actually end up being health concerns. Life is too short. Enjoy taking that few moments to boil your water and hear the kettle whistle….it’s the little things that bring joy.

Can’t wait to enjoy my new space and make some pie!

 

UPDATE:  A friend of mine was kind enough to let us know that there is a usefulness to a microwave oven so read up on the following all you preppers! :