About a year ago, I noticed several health advocates encouraging others to dispose of their microwaves. I must admit that the concept of abandoning my microwave didn't sit very well with me, at first. After all, as a child of the 80's, a microwave oven had always been a part of my life.As a busy mama to four little ones, I was concerned that living without a microwave would make my time in the kitchen too cumbersome. For about one month, I completely brushed off the notion of living microwave-free. Then, I was reading one of my favorite health books, Green for Life, all about green smoothies and raw nutrition. The author, Victoria Boutenko , shared that Russia, the country she is from, banned microwaves years ago for health reasons. I decided that it was time to make a baby step towards change, so with my husband's blessing, I moved our microwave out to our garage for one month. I decided that if I could live without it for 30 days, I would get rid of it. If I couldn't live without it, I could easily rescue it from my garage, and restore it to its previous location.
My experiment went well, much to my surprise, and we made do without our microwave for the entire 30 days. It has been about 10 months since my experiment, and I am happy to report that it was much easier than I thought it would be to live without a microwave. I have a smaller, galley-style kitchen, and my counter space is at a premium. Getting rid of the microwave helped me to reclaim some of my counter space.
Here are a few ways that I make do without a microwave:
Heating up Beverages
I have a small saucepan that I use to heat up water for hot beverages on the stovetop. It only takes a minute or two longer than it would have in the microwave. I also use this method for melting chocolate, re-warming coffee, etc.. Another great alternative would be an electric kettle or a tea kettle.
Toaster Oven
Toaster ovens offer the same conveniences of a microwave without compromising the nutrition content of your food. There are many dishes that can be used in the toaster oven to reheat leftovers. Almost everyday, I use the Pampered Chef Small Bar Pan to heat/reheat food in my toaster oven. It is perfect for making crispy quesadillas, toasted sandwiches, or for heating a single slice of homemade pizza! My hubby would never eat baked potatoes when I zapped them in the microwave; he said they were too mushy and odd tasting. I started making them in the toaster oven and he loved how crispy the potatoes were. We have gotten a lot of use out of our $20 toaster oven. When it eventually "bites the dust" we are planning on upgrading to a convection toaster oven, which will cook food even quicker than our current model.
Popcorn
Even before we "kissed our microwave goodbye", we had made the switch to air-popping our popcorn. Many manufacturers of microwave popcorn had been adding diacetyl to their popcorn. My little ones get very excited whenever we bring out our popcorn popper. If you don't have one of these handy gadgets, try this stovetop method.
Crock Pot
Keeping foods warm throughout the day prevents the need to reheat.
Living without a microwave is much easier than I ever expected. There is one non-food purpose that I miss having a microwave for, and that is to heat up my corn pack. It was an absolute Godsend when I was in labor with babies #3 and #4. It felt amazing applied to my lower back during contractions. I have tried to find an adequate substitute, but haven't been able to yet. My husband got me an Instant Heat Therapy Pack, which you have to boil after each use. It often takes 20+ minutes to make it ready to be reactivated. Other than that, I don't miss my microwave at all. If you have any ideas about a good substitute, I would really appreciate it!
Do you use a microwave? Do you think you could live without it?
Further Reading
The Hidden Hazards of Microwave Cooking
Why We Should All Get Rid of Our Microwave
Do You Microwave Your Food?
Minding the Microwave: Reseach Notes
This post is linked to Women Living Well, Healthy2Day Wednesdays,Kitchen Tip Tuesdays, and WFMW.
12 Comments:
We stopped using ours over a year ago, too. My MIL has an EMF gauge and it's CRAZY how high that thing goes from the microwave. We still have ours in our laundry room (that was my "deal" with hubby for "getting rid" of it) and we only use it to heat up rice packs. We recently got a toaster oven but until then we went entirely without and just used the conventional oven and got along fine! And I much prefer knowing we're without the microwave. :)
I've been thinking of doing this for years now. This is very inspirational.
We got rid of ours a year and a half ago, after finding out how horrible they are for your health. We don't miss it, and never think about it. Everyone thinks we are so weird for not having one! Of course they think we are nuts when we tell them why we don't have one.
Wrap your heat pack in a layer of aluminum foil and place in the oven on 300F for 5-10 minutes. I bet the toaster oven would work well!
We have a microwave that we hardly use. If it was up to me we wouldn't have one. Most microwave popcorn has TBHQ,etc. in it. I remember before people paid for tv service/programming we were told about tv radiation. I wouldn't have a tv either(I read Mary Pride's book-The Way Home in the eighties: home-school.com). I stopped using the dishwasher. It seemed ridiculous to rinse off the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher-might as well wash them. And it's safer for the grandbabies. I remember reading that children shouldn't play near dishwashers,dryers,etc. when the appliance is on. Thank you for this post.
We got rid of our microwave about 3 years ago....and haven't missed it! We found a toaster oven at Goodwill that was brand new, still in the box. We love using it to reheat foods and cook small batches. I love that it makes food crispy like it is supposed to be, rather than soggy as in the microwave. We use a lot of the methods you posted about...and like you, I love that I don't have a huge monster microwave sitting on my counter top!
I found it fascinating that microwaves are banned in Russia!
Jessica~ Thank you so much for the recommendation about putting the heat pack in foil in the oven. I was scared of catching the house on fire. Have you tried it? Blessings!
Christine,
Our microwave is on the floor under a hutch in our dining room. I never use it but Mike occassionally does and likes for us to still have it around (however hidden, hehehe)! My parents live microwave free too :p
We've been trying to cut down on our microwave use......and you've given me renewed vigor! Thanks! :-)
I've got a dim memory of my mother telling my father to get that thing out of her kitchen, back when microwaves first came out.
We've got one and use it maybe a couple of times a week. Mostly for bacon and popcorn. I probably *could* live without it, but I don't really want to.
Christine thanks for sharing your survival story & suggestions! And thanks for linking up with Healthy 2day Wednesdays. We never use the one that's at out house that we rent. Also, I added this to my top 3 from last weeks link up. Yay!
My dad bought my mom one of the first microwaves when they came out commercially. I think I was a jr or sr in high school at the time, so I didn't grow up with one. But I haven't been without one since. However, it has always been a reheating too and I only ever really cooked veggies in it. It seems broccoli bakes potatoes and makes amazing corn on the cob. But lets face it, that's about all it can do, in my opinion anyway. So I've never used it much anyway.
I live in Texas so in my house there is a rule, once the temp. reaches and stays at or near a hundred for more than a week the oven is off limits. It hasn't been turn on for even a second since mid-may. That means my bacon has to be cooked stove top because I got over the whole bacon in the microwave thing years ago. Since no oven potatoes are bake in the crockpot and grilled corn on the cob is like heaven, who needs a microwave right? Now I do reheat food occasionally but more often than not I do it stove top style the way we did before microwaves. Now if I can just get the rest of the family to give up the reheat thing I can get rid of the darned thing and have it's place in the laundry room to use for laundry or pet food...lol
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