What's cooking?

I was nuking up some leftover Chinese food for dinner the other night. I was minding my own business, getting the table set, as the microwave oven hummed and my chosen meal spun on the turntable. 

Suddenly it stopped, and there was the sound of a crunch.

Did the door come ajar? This unit is well over a decade old, and the door doesn't have a programmed lock; opening it on purpose or by accident will pause the cooking. 

No, the readout was blank. Huh?

Well, try, try again, right? So I started it going, and the crackle came out louder, and smoke began to spew from beneath the machine. 

This, as we say in the trades, is not good. 

The machine stopped on its own again, but the smoke continued, so I carefully reached for the plug. All I could think of was that warning video I'd posted a couple of years ago about the hideous dangers of the electrical components of microwave ovens. Fortunately, I was (spoiler alert!) not electrocuted, or even mildly shocked. 

I removed the still-cold food from the interior and turned the machine on its back so that if there was an actual fire going I could find the source. But no, whatever was burning had ceased. The bottom plate was warm to the touch, but it would have been that way just from the cooking. 

Whatever else this appliance was, it was dead. Really most sincerely dead. Dead as an armadillo run over by nine wheels of an 18-wheeler dead. 

I've had microwaves die on me before, but usually they just refuse to start -- they don't start heaving smoke. I was sorry to see it go. I wound up heating my dinner in a pot on the stove, like some kinda hobo. "King of the roaaaad!" I wanted to sing. 

Unlike most kids today, I did not grow up with a microwave oven. My dad loved science fiction but did not trust microwaves. I'm not sure if that was ironic or logical. So my mom couldn't get one until Dad had passed on. At least the microwaves didn't kill him. 

We got a new one within a couple of days. It's the same brand and it works just fine. It's supposed to air-fry too, and if it actually does that well, it will be the first air-fryer I've used that did. But it's not the same. The old one -- carted away the next morning by the garbage men -- was actually big enough to fit an entire lasagna pan. A full-size Corningware lasagna pan. You don't see that everywhere. The new one? Maybe a quart casserole. 

 

Well, that's the way the water boils. At least the new one works. No more cookin' over a campfire and fightin' with the other bindlestiffs over my beans. This is the twenty-first century, you know.