I'm not a Fan of Microwaves
These are really popular. I hate them. I haven't owned one in years and every microwave I ever had was a gift from some relative or other who liked microwaves and thought I "needed" one and just couldn't afford it.Food quality is super important to me. Microwaves just don't deliver on food quality. I have been known to buy "microwave meals" and stick them in a conventional oven to heat (some have instructions for such).
I have owned two microwaves in my life, both gifted to me by relatives, and I rarely use them, even in hotels. I think my mom probably bought me one and I think my sister gave me her old one when she upgraded.
When that second one died, I was taking college classes part time and money was an issue and a new microwave would have been about $160. I talked to my kids who said "The only thing we will miss is the popcorn button." so the three of us mutually agreed to get a $15 hot air popcorn popper.
My kids learned to make their own popcorn and air popped popcorn is healthier anyway. Some time after that, we were visiting someone or in a hotel or whatever and had access to a microwave and by then I and my oldest son had a proper diagnosis for our medical condition that significantly impacts gut function and we were obsessively reading labels.
So we talk about buying or making microwave popcorn and he reads the ingredients and that's a NO from him. And I felt tons better about that hot air popcorn maker.
My mother was a full-time homemaker for years with an older, old fashioned husband (my dad). Dad never learned to cook. That just wasn't really a thing men from his era typically did.
When I was probably in elementary school, he tried to make himself a cup of coffee. Dad probably had a poor sense of time, which made him extremely good at having "patience" and sticking with tasks until it was done, however long it took. It made him a good hunter and soldier.
He left the room and boiled all the water out of an old-fashioned coffee pot like you see in cowboy movies and melted the pot until it was slag dripping through the burner. They had to pay an electrician to replace the burner because this was before plug-and-play burners existed.
My mother never let him try to cook again. So she was an early adopter of microwaves because she began working at a paid job over his sexist pig objections while continuing to do ALL the women's work with ZERO help from him and actively forbidding him from trying to "help" with those things.
When I was a teenager, she spent big bucks to have an electrician custom install a microwave above the built-in oven where there was a stupid, inconvenient cabinet -- they cut the doors down to stick the microwave in it -- and no electric outlet. She loved microwaves and dishwashers because they helped free her from effectively a life of unappreciated slave labor as a woman.
When I was a full-time homemaker, my husband expected the stereotypical American meat and potatoes and two vegetables and homemade gravy and fresh biscuits and homemade desert for dinner. And never appreciated me.
When I got divorced and got a corporate job, my son took over the cooking at some point and he's a better cook than I am, but he told me he will never learn to do those extremely complicated meals. He has commented on he's not willing to work as hard as I did to put a meal on the table.
At the same time, he's pickier than I am about eating fresh and healthy and rags on me about stuff like "Glad to see you finally getting over your poverty mentality and throwing out the stale chips instead of trying to force yourself to eat them because we can't afford..."
This site grows out of the fact that I got him to successfully take over the women's work and our diets and quality of life improved while he declined to step into the role of house slave chained to the stove.
This site exists because I had a corporate job and worked with a lot of career women at a woman-friendly corporation and I met exactly one woman who wasn't jealous of that arrangement and weirded out by it. She was a senior manager and had long been a single mom while also putting herself through college and she was like "I never learned to cook. I can't get the timing right."
The highest ranked woman in our department that I had friction with for stupid situational reasons reacted like I was personally attacking her for talking about that. And her husband followed her to Georgia from New York to support her career when she got this impressive promotion within the company, but she still did most of the cooking and cleaning at home.
So that's why this site exists at all. My son was happy to take over the cooking and cleaning and did it to a higher standard than I did and improved our quality of life while say "NOPE" to the disrespected slave role and career women around me were losing their minds in reaction to this SHOCKING plot twist.
Anyway, one of my best friends that I only knew online who nonetheless helped save my life was a former registered nurse. I talked to her once about how I just absolutely hate microwave food and she sent me information about Russian studies linking microwave food to health problems and gave me her enthusiastic approval to continue wanting nothing to do with microwaved food.
So I'm not apologizing. My best friend, a medical professional, gave me PERMISSION. I don't need yours.
If you like microwave meals, get off my lawn and get your food tips elsewhere. Problem solved.