If they can put a man on the moon…

Jim writes:
If they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they make a tv dinner to my liking?

Bob writes;
Dear Jim,
This is one of the many faults of today’s society. Selling T.V dinners that you can prepare in four minutes, but then they taste like crap. Unless of course you try one of the Marie Calanders T.V. Dinners that taste really nice. The downside is you have to pay a pretty penny to buy one.

If your like me and you want a good cheap meal that cost less than two dollars, this is what you do. Take an inexpensive T.V. dinner, like banquet, take all the plastic off the top and replace it with a moist paper towel and microwave it for the amount of time on the directions. I guarantee, even the cheapest meal will be quite tasty.

I discovered this technique after watching an advertisement for a plastic container that claimed you could cook quit tasty scrambled eggs in the microwave. I tried it and no matter what I did they came out like plastic.

Then it occurred to me that a microwave excites the atoms in the food (makes them move) which is what heat does, only it does it without heat. So, the top layer of the food will quickly loose moisture, just like water evaporating from a pond. Only it does it very quickly. So I figured if you introduced moisture to the top layer at the same rate that it was leaving, the food will taste “just made.” Dumping a couple of tablespoons on top of whatever your heating won’t work, unless you just happen to add the exact amount of water that the microwave process will extract. That’s where the moist paper towel comes in. Moisture leaves the towel and enters the top layer of the food at the same rate that the moisture is leaving the food your heating. Thus, the cheese on a left-over pizza will warm up with the gooey consistency of cheese just melted in the oven.

It works great, try it! But here’s the best part. You CAN microwave scrambled eggs in less that two minutes, and they will taste just like you cooked them on the stove. Here’s how. Mix two eggs in a plastic bowl (I like to add just a little milk, maybe a tablespoon). Put it in the microwave with a moist paper towel on top for 1 ½ minutes. Take them out, stir lightly (to get that ‘cooked on the stove’ broken consistency), then microwave for another 15 seconds. It comes out pretty good and its really fast. If you need to make more eggs, do it this way; cook it for 45 seconds for each egg, then stir and cook for about five seconds for each egg.

The plastic towel works for anything you want to microwave, except anything cooked in water.

If T.V. dinner makers were smart, they would have a moist permeable cover under the plastic covering the dinner. The water would freeze, and be there when you warmed it up.

Until then, I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.

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