Microwave Chefs!

[kuan]

We were in the town of West Yellowstone on Thanksgiving day, living in a hotel for a week. Dinner was Sliced deli turkey, microwave baked potatoes, microwave in bag corn, and a can of cranberry sauce. But get this, my ever resourceful wife spied some apples on the breakfast counter. She peeled them with a plastic knife, added some apple cider mix, soaked raisins, oatmeal, sugar, and nuked it. Next she topped it with granola and nuked it again. Voila! Apple crisp for dessert! Sweet.

Anyway, looks like we'll be doing this hotel living again. You folks have any good ideas for the microwave?

[Mezzaluna]

Brilliant improvisation!

This reminds me of the days when I was a kid- my mom packed a pan, a hot plate and utensils in a suitcase and made meals in the hotel room's bathroom. One meal I remember (because it ended up on the floor) was "camp stew". It was a can of alphabet soup poured over a pound of browned ground beef. Please, Kuan, skip that one!

I'm going to suppose you have a very basic microwave to deal with. Providing you have some microwave-safe cooking vessels, you could make:

1. Vegetarian lasagne (using the no-boil noodles or long slices of eggplant or zucchini). Pre-"steam" the veggies a bit, then layer them with the ricotta, sauce, etc.
2. Rice dishes- Easy to cook rice in the microwave, and I'm sure this includes risotto. But if you bring your rice cooker, you've got even more latitude!
3. Burritos
4. Egg salad - break the eggs into a bowl and pierce the yolks. Cover with another dish or plastic wrap. Nuke and allow to cool. Use like hard-boiled eggs.
5. Our own David Joachim published "A Man, a Can, a Microwave". The recipes include some processed ingredients, but it's worth a look. And, you know how to make bechamel sauce, etc. to sub for things in cans.
6. You can make fricos in the microwave. You'll need some parchment paper, but you can make them.
7. Omelets
8. Chocolate truffles!
9. You can "brown" ground beef or poultry, so you can make tacos and nachos, etc.

If you're going to be in a "suite" type room you'll have counter space for a George Foreman grill as well as the rice cooker. In a case like that you won't have to be clandestine about cooking odors as we were on vacation. (I learned to stuff a towel under the door because of that!) That's all I can think of right off the bat. I'll keep you and the family in mind and share more if I can come up with something.

[higjse]

I usually steep my milk/cream with aromatics in the microwave for ice cream bases