When I was a kid, mom worked part-time and we were frequently at home alone during the day. We were in Jr. or Sr. High School at this point so it was up to us to fix our lunch—eventually, this led to me making dinner as mom’s job left her getting home around 6pm. But I digress. We frequently had left overs if it wasn’t enough for that night’s dinner. Mom bought things that would be easy for us to fix: frozen TV dinners, frozen pot pies, Mac & Cheese, etc. Our quick favorites were cooked rice with canned cream soup. Or a quick version of a Tuna Casserole made with mac & cheese, cream soup and tuna. But let’s talk about the frozen food. We had to think about lunch around 11am because it took a good 20 minutes or so for the oven to heat and then another 40-50 minutes for our dinner to heat. Pot pies were our favorite but they took the longest to make.
I remember when microwaves were first introduced to the kitchen. I remember asking mom to get one and her reply “we don’t need a microwave” was very dissatisfying. I longed to make lunch quickly in a fancy new tech gadget. My younger sister and I had to suffice with the fun of using our cousins’ microwave who conveniently lived next door. Granted, next door was ⅛ of a mile down the road but they were within shouting distance. We learned some things not to do: don’t put a soft boiled egg in the microwave to finish it off to hard boiled as the resulting exploded mess is not edible. Well, it might be but it is in little pieces on the inside walls of the oven. Don’t put anything metal in the microwave as it even ruins the lovely gold rim of a tea cup.
Around this same time, my dad was looking at new cars or, more specifically, new trucks. Okay, dad liked to look at new vehicles in general even if we weren’t going to be getting one any time soon. It seemed he was constantly on the hunt for the perfect truck for towing our 30+ foot 5th wheel trailer. (For those unfamiliar, a 5th wheel is a trailer that connects to and is towed from a hitch in the center, generally above the axel, of the bed of a truck.) At the time, quite a few of these dealerships had prizes for a few lucky customers whose name would be drawn. The gimmick was that you had to visit the dealership to enter your name. Since dad was there anyway, and I believe it was part of his reasoning for going, he entered every one of the sweepstakes he was offered.
Why bring up the dealership sweepstakes? Because dad was unusually lucky that Summer. He won multiple prizes: steak knives, portable radio, picnic basket or maybe it was a cooler, and much to my delight, a microwave oven. I might’ve been the most excited person in the house to finally have our very own microwave. Back in those days a microwave oven was big.
My sister and I spent a not so insignificant amount of time watching marshmallows in the microwave. And, so as not to let them go to waste, we made s’mores using chocolate chips which were always on hand.