Farewell Microwave

Once upon a time in October 2016, I had a microwave saga. If you want to read the whole thing it is here.  If you don't care to read the whole thing it can be summed up as we bought a new microwave.

Well. It stopped heating this weekend. Oh, it still turned on. The turntable spins. The light comes on. It sounds like it's doing something, but it isn't. So we removed the microwave from our counter and suddenly our kitchen feels huge.

Now my brother-in-law and his family are organic dairy farmers and ultra hippy. And they do not have a microwave. We do not fall into this category. At all. I have absolutely zero qualms about microwave usage. But we are currently a non-microwave family and I will stubbornly NOT be purchasing another one any time soon.

Partly because even at a fairly low price point they should last longer than 19 months and I am a little stubborn about that.

Partly because I am kind of really enjoying the counter space and the fact that the toaster can live on the counter instead of getting put away every time. (It's a really pretty toaster and it does 4 slices! It was a Christmas present so the novelty of toasting more than two pieces of bread at a time is still largely in play. Plus it's pretty. And it's friends with my stand mixer.)

Partly because even at a fairly low price point I could get a week's worth of groceries for the same price and... we just don't use the microwave that often anyway.

I have always (like since a child) hated the smell of microwave popcorn so we do stovetop or more recently our stircrazy machine.

We are not big on leftovers in this house. We cook about what we need and Husband takes whatever is left to work for lunches. For reheating pizza, which is the leftovers I enjoy, I have always used the oven because soggy pizza isn't good.

We already own a vegetable steamer basket so even the super easy "steam in the bag" veggies don't take that much longer. To be honest, veggies are one of the things I would use the microwave for most often but really, steaming them on the stove doesn't take but a minute more.

The other thing that I use the microwave for the most is melting smaller amounts of butter for recipes. And the mighty Google and internet even have a solution for that. It's a teeny tiny little pot.  Or I could make shift a little double boiler for the short term.

So here we are going on a microwave free journey. At least for the next month or so just to see if we can.