Slashfood

• World's smallest cooking appliance is truly a micro-wave
  

  Filed under: Microwaving, On the Blogs, New Products

  
  I know there's a race to make electronics smaller, but this is this a little ridiculous. Inventorspot reported today on the world's smallest microwave, which made its debut at this springs Chicago International Home and Hardware Show.
  
  The IWaveCube is so named because of its dimensions: about one cubic foot. That doesn't leave a lot of cooking space. I mean, what are you going to cook in it? The only place where I can see this being useful is in an office break room. I gather that people in...
  



• Tip of the Day: Quick, tasty, and crunchy baked potatoes
  

  Filed under: Vegetables, Baking, Microwaving, Tip of the Day

  Getting that crisp and tasty skin on a perfectly cooked baked potato might take a while, but there's one shortcut that can get you good results really quickly.

  Continue reading Tip of the Day: Quick, tasty, and crunchy baked potatoes

  Permalink | Email this | Comments
  
  



• The man who microwaves his salads
  

  Filed under: Microwaving, Health & Medical, Soups/Salads

  

  I feel like I'm revealing some deep, dark secret, but here goes: I microwave my salads.

  Now, this isn't because I like my lettuce and carrots and salad dressing really hot, it's because of bacteria. I started doing this a couple of years ago, when we had all those recalls and scares involving pre-made bagged salads and spinach. I make my salad on a plate then zap it for about 20 seconds. Just enough to kill something but not make the salad get hot and shrivel.

  Now, I have to stress that I have no idea if 20 seconds in the microwave will even...
  




• My new addiction: Trader Joe's Black bean and cheese burritos
  

  Filed under: Microwaving, New Products, Comfort Food

  First, let me apologize to every foodie who reads this blog. I deeply regret making this admission: I do sometimes consume microwavable food.
  
  The new obsession is making me do it.
  
  Black bean and jack cheese burritos from Trader Joe's.
  
  I buy three. Over the course of a week, I eat three. I hide them from my kids. They're perfect for lunch. I work from home, blogging, blogging, blogging, and often waiting until my blood sugar is so low I can barely make it down the stairs into the kitchen. With great effort, I reach into the...
  



• Sometimes 'quick' dinners just means lazy dinners
  

  Filed under: Dinner, Microwaving, Fast Food

  It wasn't until I started cooking meals from scratch on a regular basis that I discovered just how much of a fallacy this whole pre-made foods business is. I'm not talking about one of those tasty, pre-roasted chickens or fresh meals you can buy at the supermarket, but rather canned and frozen foods. They are great in a pinch, but they are not a big time saver, and they're certainly not a decent substitute for fresh foods.
  
  So, reading Astin Cubed's post on "Simple Food" today was like reading a rant of my own, without the obsession with snap peas. How...
  



• National Frozen Food Month: Frozen Burritos
  

  Filed under: Lunch, Dinner, Snacks, Grains, Dairy, Nuts/seeds, Cheese, Microwaving, America

  
  Frozen burritos arrive in the freezer two ways -- either they come in "bulk" in a giant box that takes up two-thirds of your freezer space, or they come individually wrapped. At my grocery store, Tina's Burritos were on that ever-so-deceptive "club card special" for three-for-99-cents. That makes each burrito a very recession-friendly thirty-three cents, but don't think I fell for the advertising double-speak! I only bought one!
  
  The wrapper made a very proud proclamation of "100% CHEDDAR CHEESE." There were no...
  



• Singing George Foreman's praises
  

  Filed under: Microwaving, Vegetarian/Vegan

  As Joni Mitchell so eloquently put it, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
  
  I think she was talking about my stove.
  
  You see, earlier this week, the gas line to my stove developed a leak. The good news? The gas company responded promptly to my frantic phone call, and switched off the gas. The bad news? Until my landlord returns from the country to inspect the site (long story), I'm stuck without a working stove.
  
  My point in telling you all of this? I've become a slave to my Foreman grill. Salads and hummus-on-cold-tortillas only get you so far before...
  



• Trashy eats
  

  Filed under: Recipes, Microwaving, On the Blogs, Comfort Food

  Do you consider "fish sticks and liquor" a legitimate dinner? Appreciate the radioactive glow of freeze-dried gravy? Then check out Trashy Eats. It's the blog Divine from John Waters' Pink Flamingos would have written, had "the filthiest person alive" lived in the Internet era.
  
  The new blog features recipes for things like Bachelor Food (Betty Crocker's Potato Buds mixed frozen veggies and a flavoring packet from ramen noodles) and Frito Pie (canned chili, Fritos, cheese, onion), and reviews of stuff like Banquet Homestyle Bakes. Stuff that costs about $1 a serving and can be...
  



• Happy Microwave Oven Day!
  

  Filed under: Recipes, Books, Microwaving, Holidays

  Now, I'm not sure if this means this is the day to buy a microwave oven or cook something in a microwave oven. I'll assume the former (though maybe this is a good day to finally replace the one you've been using for 15 years).

  There are actually several books about microwaving oven cooking: Microwave Gourmet by Barbara Kafka, A Man, A Can, A Microwave, by David Joachim and Men's Health, and perhaps the first (or at least one of the first) books on microwave cooking, Richard Deacon's Microwave Oven Cookwave. Yup, the same Richard...
  




• Maybe microwaving isn't so bad
  

  Filed under: Microwaving

  
  You know how we, in all our food snobby ways, always snicker a little when we hear about those poor, ignorant people who think using the microwave oven is "cooking?"
  
  Well, using the microwave might not actually be so bad.
  
  According to "green" experts and The Green Book authors Thomas Kostigen and Elizabeth Rogers, microwaves are more than 4x more energy efficient than traditional ovens! If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year, we could use the saved energy to light up the entire continent of Africa for a year (not that Africa needs lighting, but you know...