A Microwave and a Masters...

There is something that i love more than anything else that is microwavable and consumable. The pure convenience, the delicious parts that aren't dry or stuck to the sides of the plastic container, the awesome aroma that wafts through the house in an almost vomit-inducing permeation (did you like how i used permeate there? ok, neither did i). Anyway, in case you're stupid, of course i'm talking about...

Microwave dinners.

These things are great. I mean, where else can you get a relatively unsatisfying meal cooked in a metal box that makes things hot, dry, and well, tasteless for under 3 dollars that can take the place of some good ole fashioned tlc and fresh ingredients? Nowhere! That's where! But it's not all bad.

Some of the benefits to eating/cooking/cautiously consuming microwave dinners are that they are pretty quick to make, and can hold your hunger over until you:
a. get off your lazy ass and go out to buy something or cook something to eat
b. keel over and die from eating said "dinner"

Notice i said "pretty quick to make" and not "convenient" or "easy." There is a reason for this. It used to be, you could buy a microwave dinner, and without knowing much else, basically poke holes in the plastic cover with a fork, chuck it in the microwave for 3-5 minutes (read 4 minutes), and then just go eat the awesome half-frozen, half-dried out dinner. This, unfortunately, is no longer the case.

Now, when you buy a microwave dinner, you get a box that looks suspiciously just like the old boxes did, but when you open said box, you're in for a surprise. You get this tray, that looks like a normal microwave dinner tray, but it is contained within 20 different pouches. Then you turn the box over to see how long it should be heated when you realize that there is a fold-out section to the instructions. It seems like these guys don't really think through how to write the instructions as if they're apprentices hoping to someday make it to the big time of writing for cell phone activations. Anyway, the instructions go something like this:

1. Remove tray from container (thanks.)
2. Remove pouches from tray (uh. there's like 12 of them...)
3. Remove all pouches from tray (oh, thanks, think you could've combined the last two...)
4. Poke vent hole in vent pouch (ok, there we go, nice big vent hole)
5. If hole is larger than a pinprick, use enclosed tape to retape hole and reopen smaller hole (well crap, i should really read ahead)
6. Replace noodle pouch into tray (does the noodle pouch need a vent hole?)
7. Remove noodle pouch from tray, and poke vent hole in noodle pouch (well, um, yeah, i just asked that... fucker... ok, pinprick sized hole...)
8. Poke another hole in noodle pouch at a distance of the square root of pi in centemeters after being converted from inches using 2.54cm/in conversion (wtf...)
9. Microwave for 2-5:30 minutes (shit! no middle ground... ok, 3:42)
10. Remove noodle pouch, set aside.
11. Replace sauce pouch, microwave for 5-9 minutes (this was a real one from a real microwave dinner i had... 5-9 minutes? c'mon, that's a pretty big margin)
12. Remove noodles from pouch, place in tray. (what about the sauce?)
13. Remove sauce, pour over noodles (oh, ok...)
14. Stir.
15. Put secondary sauce pouch in microwave (oh shit... secondary pouch? which one is this one i just poured all over my noodles?)
16. Microwave secondary sauce pouch for 15 seconds-12 minutes (...)
17. Discard secondary sauce pouch, do not consume (uh oh... i hope this is the right pouch)
18. Solve this equation:

Fuck that, i'm going to eat some poop, i mean mcdonald's i mean, poop.




Mitch Hedberg's QotD:

I don't have a microwave but I do have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.