General Chat

It's vicious. No, I didn't trip on it and fall on my face. That's what pyjama bottoms are for.

You know how Pyrex is safe for freezer, oven, dishwasher ... well, I just hope it doesn't say microwave, or I may have to sue.

Disclaimer: I have no one to blame but myself (as usual) since I had already done this three or four times, although to less disastrous effect. (I think manufacturers are supposed to account for stupid people, though.)

I have a giant 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup that I often use to heat up pre-cooked casseroles in the microwave for dinner. The problem happens when I've forgotten to thaw them. The measuring cup, with the litre container of frozen spaghetti sauce or lentils & veg standing up in it, then thinks it's empty. So it heats up itself, which non-empty containers aren't supposed to do.

And then when you reach in and grasp the handle ... you are grasping molten glass. And the entire inside of your pointer finger ... you know, the one you use for typing and mousing, which in my case means for working ... is immediately medium rare. Me, I prefer my fingers tartare.

Amazingly, it hardly hurt, and there's almost no actual broken skin. Just a kind of leather effect. Cortisone cream and hand lotion are keeping it fairly supple.

The measuring cup fared less well. It now has a sort of decorative handle where the thick glass meets in the middle and is held together in one spot by a fine strand.

I'll have to find something else to make microwave peanut brittle for the menfolk in now.

Come to think of it, you know, I may have bought a cheap Woolco imitation all those years ago, and not Pyrex at all.

I remember buying it. The Woolco was closing down to make way for a Walmart and my BFF and I were picking up bargains. She got me the measuring cup for my birthday. Being environmentally conscious, we eschewed bags and she was carrying it close to her chest as we sauntered through the mall. Suddenly she stopped. She had lost a contact lens. She was quite blind. So I was the one crawling around on the floor hunting for it. And then ... she looked down into the measuring cup, and there was her contact lens.

So all in all, I guess it's been a good friend. Reasonably.

Anyway.

Watch out for glass containers in the microwave that might have got the idea they're empty. They are not good things to take a firm grasp of.

Do you not have a defrost button on your microwave Janey? Defrost then heat and the jug should be OK. Well Pyrex would be!!

Do you mean -- do I not have any patience? ;)

(I know you didn't mean -- do I not have any sense!)

I'm usually too hungry when I go home at night to futz with defrosting!

Speaking of which, time for today's hard unripe tasteless banana ...

Oh dear Janey.....

S x

Does sound that you faired better than the Pyrex dish, must admit I never put anything glass like in microwave. Hope the pain does not kick in.
Carol

Hearing this makes me so very glad that I don't have a microwave ... I always suspected that they where dangerous .

Hope your finger is healed soon Janey .

Just out of interest Janey, do you ever put flat-pack furniture together ;) lol and if so do you faithfully make sure you have all the right items in the packs before starting.. 8 x 2 " bolt headed wotsits and the like...or do you rush in regardless:))

hope your finger gets better soon, I've found honey helps it heal quicker.

Edit, sorry that sounded a bit uncaring lol, but it's only that it is the sort of thing that I do, impatient to get things done , no time to waste lol.

Well now where was this sound advice when I needed it? Not put glass in the microwave? And here I've been coveting those glass things with plastic lids that go from freezer to microwave ... that I know I'd break the day after I bought them ...

Best stick to my yogourt and margarine containers for the freezer, and thaw everything before heating in non-glass objects.

And never run with scissors, and always wear my mittens when I go out ...


How about a contest.

What's the worst injury anybody's done to themself so far this year? Or all-time worst, if you're feeling boastful.

The worst one I've had done *to* me so far this year is for No.1 to bring his mother's pneumonia bug home from Christmas, take over the chesterfield with it for two weeks (and stop doing the dishes and laundry), and then share it.

sorry JC


just had to have a little giggle


as it's the kind of daft thing I do.



Tha's why I have a large aloe plant in the sunniest room in the house.




although I must admit that I have never put Pyrex in the microwave

..... most of mine are soooooooooooooooooo old that they pre-date microwaves!

My OH has one of those fancy vegetable slicer things that he uses with great dexterity. Had our son visiting for a few days and decided to do a salad for lunch. OH went out for some cold meat so I decided to tackle the veggies. I didn't use the finger guard and sliced a big chunk out of one of my fingers including the finger nail. It didn't hurt and I didn't notice until my son pointed out the pouring blood and that's when the pain set in - and I fainted. Stitches and now a finger nail that has never really grown back properly:-(

S x

How about remembering to defrost your evening meal beforehand??


Now have visions of Janey sitting with her finger in a jar of honey!


Treat yourself to a large plastic microwave jug!


I usually have an array of 'sergeant's stripes' up my forearm from catching on the oven racks whilst moving things in and out of the oven. However, I spotted some protectors which you can put on oven rack to stop that happening. From that good gadget shop....Lakeland. Some super stuff in there!



Cx.

Okay, RR, you asked.

Flat-pack furniture? Like .. IKEA!

Back in ... lemme see, it was the summer of 1984. It was a Sunday morning in June. I remember this because I was about to have my first meeting later that day with the local election campaign team. I was in my office, on the third floor of an old downtown row house that I shared with some community groups. I was alone in the building and the door was locked.

And I was putting together flat-pack furniture. Bate your breath ...

It was three low cabinets with shelving units on top of them. I got one put together, set the shelf thing on top, and realized I wanted it about 2 inches farther to the right. So I pushed the bottom cabinet. I looked up to see the shelf thing heading for my head. You know what that stuff is made of, and how heavy it is.

I formed a plan as I watched it happen. I would dive across the room and dial "0" on the phone (this was before the days of 911/999). I didn't want to be getting knocked out alone on the top floor of a vacant locked building on a Sunday morning.

So once I got out from under the shelf thing, I did. I said to the operator "I've just been hit on the head and wanted to be on the phone in case I got unconscious". There was blood running down my face. For reasons that eluded me, she said "I'll connect you to the police". So the police phone rang about 10 times ... lucky I wasn't really being beaten up or anything ... and by the time the cop answered, I figured out what she'd thought was going on, and I explained it to him nobody was assaulting me, I'd just been self-harming, and decided the blood was just standard scalp wound stuff, and we all went about our business.

A couple of hours later, I went to the campaign meeting, and got the manager, a childcare centre manager, to look at the top of my head. She demanded that I go to hospital immediately. So I did.

The shelf thing had landed flat smack on the top of my head, head-on. I'm a person with a ridge in my middle of my skull, front to back. The smack caused my scalp to split, apparently about an inch, along the ridge right on top. This was apparently an unusual effect and the ER staff seemed puzzled by it, but in any event it called for a stitch to hold the edges of the split together.

As the nice young doctor was doing that, he chit chatted and eventually asked me whether I was married. I opened my mouth and was about to say "mind your own * business, what has this got to do with my medical care, would you ask a man this??" (we were still in the days when women got asked their marital status on every form ever designed for anything).

And it hit me. He had to ask. I might be a battered spouse. So of course I protested too much. No, no, I said, really, I pulled a bookshelf over on my head, I'm glad you asked and cross my heart, I would tell you if anyone had hit me, but I did it to myself with an IKEA bookshelf!

And then I went home. I don't know what my records say ...


So that, RR, is what happens when I put together flat-pack furniture.

Next, we'll do playground equipment ...

I've seen those shelf protectors in catalogues from a company we have over here


now if I could only remember which catalogue




BUT


you're not now supposed to put ANYTHING plastic in the microwave 'cos nasty stuff can leach out into the food



it's ceramic or nothing.




sylvia

Okay, SueMaid, that's just gross.

My dad took off the tip (just the fleshy bit) of his thumb while using an industrial electric slicer to slice lettuce at his restaurant once. Now, me, I'm not *intentionally* reckless!

Cynthia, I can't quite picture your injury process, but the guards seem like a wise idea. Me, I do that on the electric broiler elements in the stove. I don't think they make guards for that.

My favourite is: take the pot out of the oven, take off the oven mitts, take the lid off the pot ........

Sylvia, I've often had aloe plants in my kitchen. Sadly, I kill them before they are any use.

Point of interest, after I stated did not put glass in microwave. I put a dish in my microwave which is about 45 yrs old, it is white opaque with pretty flowers, guess what it says on bottom, surprise surprise Pyrex. Point of this comment they obviously don't make them like they used to.
Carol

Carol - I have some old pyrex casserole dishes and they've been used in the microwave - they certainly weren't made with microwaves in mind but they've survived. Now the modern Pyrex should be microwave safe - but I've gone through a couple of bowls so I'm thinking they don't make them like they used to.

S x

I really willl have to check the bottom of that monster when I go home ... I fear I've been making unfounded allegations against Pyrex!

I do boil water in the microwave in a smaller Pyrex measuring cup (for making puke salad, yay!) and man, sometimes that water is violent when you take it out. But the cup never attacks me.

I have been putting two small casserole dishes (actually they were presents from a pen friend in Canada in the mid sixties) into my microwave since I first had one, I suppose that would be over 30 years and have not had any problems. I put pyrex casseroles dishes in there all the time.

Actually Janey I did mean have you got a defrost button? not sure all microwaves do but maybe they do these days. But I can see it was just lack of patience.
My favourite trick is opening the top cupboard in the kitchen then finding I need something in the lower cupboard or drawer, then standing up!!!

Ah yes, who would have suspected that she could go from 0 to 60 in the space of the two feet from top of bottom cupboard to bottom of top cupboard?

I've often thought one should be able to harness all that force or velocity or whatever it is, to heat the house and run the lights.

I've done that one Ann:-))

Another good one was putting OH's garden shoes to go to the veggie garden for tomatoes. Tried to walk down the steps at the back door and ended up at the bottom of the steps quicker than I expected. I'm a size 8 ladies and OH is a size 12 mens so it really was a stupid thing to do...and lazy. I got a badly bruised foot for my stupidity.

S x