If you've ever wondered if modern life is possible without a microwave oven, the answer is "yes." But it's not easy. Actually, I guess we lived without one for years back in the '70s, but back then there wasn't an industry of microwave-ready foods built up around them.

We had a microwave, or rather have one, but it's broken. We've decided with all the craziness and of course expense of Christmas to hold off buying a new one until after the holidays. Apparently Something Bad happened to it. Not sure what exactly, but it involved nasty-smelling gray smokie pouring out of the thing as I attempted to nuke some frozen broccoli for the children to eat for dinner. If there's one thing I'm paranoid about, it's fire, so I unplugged the thing from the wall and pronounced it officially dead.

I always thought that we didn't really use the microwave that much, except for reheating coffee and microwaving frozen veggies. I was wrong. First off, with two little kids in the house, the reasonably wholesome and healthy frozen foods we pick up a Trader Joe's are something of a godsend, but it's pretty tough to prepare many of them sans microwave.

The other difficult situation is with popcorn. Apparently most supermarkets believe that people only prepare microwave popcorn anymore. Personally, I can't stand the stuff, and prefer to make it the old fashioned way in a pot on the stove. (Ever make popcorn using extra-virgin olive oil? It's good... really good.) But the other night my wife went to get a bag of popcorn at Safeway and they simply didn't have it, or they were hiding it pretty well. So she came home with the microwave stuff, whereupon I remined her that our microwave was pushing up daisies. Oops. So we ripped open the bag and dumped the contents into the pan and made it that way. It actually turned out ok, but the amount of shortening contained in there really looked offputting, not to mention it's odd yellow "butter" color.