This is going to drive Catherine’s ghost bonkers, but I think I might be coming around on microwave ovens.
I’ve never owned a microwave.
Sure, I’ve used one three or four times: a couple of times in the hospital, maybe a couple of times in a hotel room.
But I’ve always been deeply suspicious of them: fire, I have always said, is an element I can get behind.
A mysterious metal box that cooks food, but not containers? That’s voodoo.
Catherine never shared my deep suspicions: she kept a microwave in her studio, and would have eagerly added one to our kitchen had my veto not made this impossible.
On Sunday, though, I had supper with my physicist friends, the two people on Prince Edward Island perhaps best able to explain how microwave ovens work, and why I do not need to suspect them.
Microwave ovens, it seems, just make water vibrate, and when it vibrates, it heats up. And because food has water in it, the water heats up the food around it. That is all.
I’m reconsidering my position.
