By Jove and by Jingo

"By Jove and by Jingo". I have been heard to pontificate, as I clean my monocle and fill my pipe, "I will not have one of those modern contraptions in my house. The wife will just have to boil her milk the way my grandaddy did it and women’s lib be damned."

I refer to a contraption that for ten years I have fought tooth and nail to deny precious bench space to in my kitchen.
The microwave.

I just don't see the need for it. As far as cooking kit goes there is a long, long, long list of stuff I would give the bench space to, but my usually reliable ability to swim against the tide has been worn down by a few factors. The biggest one is we seem to be having a few babies amongst the visitors to Lantanaland, fair enough, we all want to procreate, but the assumption of the traveling baby chef is that the kitchen they will be visiting will have a microwave. That's why the other weekend you would have found me heating some pumpkin mash on a double boiler as well as cooking dinner.

The other spear through my quite reasonable aversion is The Wife. She is convinced that if she could heat her milk for breakfast it would save her a precious ten minutes that could be much better spent daydreaming in the shower or lingering in bed instead of getting to work.

I've never liked the way it cooks food. Mum used to reheat my dinner after I came home from footy and it just tasted.... zapped. I'm sure I'll cave and use it to melt butter or chocolate but if you visit Mother Focaccia and you see a recipe for Lamb Roast in Microwave, get havock and Dr Yobbo to put a swat team together and take me out to a deserted farmhouse with nothing but butter, bacon, fresh eggs, veg, herbs, a fire and a fryypan, tie me to a chair and let Finthart do some severe reeducation.

All round it's been a bad week for my moral indignation. I'd been viewing the whole Twilight phenomenon with mild hypocritical disdain and as I buy all the books, movies and music for Lantanaland I had managed to steer the wife gently away from the books, despite the chorus of women on facebook channeling their inner fifteen year old.

The first breach was a couple of mates coming for a weeks visit of good food and lots of laughs. As a thank you I got a lovely bottle of scotch and The Wife got Twilight. To my dismay she then did an uncanny impression of me with a new Terry Pratchett, ignored me completely and read it cover to cover.

So while shopping in bigW, being the lovestruck fool I am, I saw the second one on special and got that for her. I couldn't get any worse could it. I might as well sell Lantanaland and move to a townhouse in the city. All my ideals are shot. But no. Going to training on the weekend, The Wife, unused to weekend mornings, squinted in the bright sun. I couldn't resist a shot across the bows.
"not turning into a VAMPire are you?"
"you know" she replied, with the look of a fisherman casting into his secret spot where the odds of a bite are 100%, " in Twilight, vampires aren't scared of the daylight, instead they sparkle!"

"They F^#*€NG what?!?"

I wonder if microwaves burn books.

Lantanaland from the iPhone
Grumble bloody grumble twilight grumble.