It's Microwaved!

Arlene Gryfe is a Toronto-based professional nutritionist and home
economist.

With the proliferation of home microwave ovens, a need has arisen for a comprehensive cookbook that will give a wider range of instructions and recipes than the booklets that generally accompany an oven purchase. It’s Microwaved! only partially fulfills that need.

The authors, one of whom is a home economist, have many years of experience testing and teaching the use of microwave ovens, and they are familiar with the fears and difficulties encountered by users.

An inherent problem with multi-oven microwave cookbooks is the fact that one can only generalize about cooking times and power levels, since ovens have different wattages and terminology of power levels. (Some manufacturers use word descriptions; some use a numbering system.) Of necessity, cooking times are approximate, but often the authors have included a visual description for guidance.

A useful chapter called “Brainwaves & Quick Recipes” includes more than 40 commonly used hints. These hints are referred to frequently by number, which eliminates the need for constant repetition.

The book is easy to use because of large print, clearly numbered pages, coil spine, and colored, labelled illustrations. However, yields are frequently omitted, and some recipes are included where there is no advantage to using a microwave oven. For example, apple pie requires 15 minutes additional baking (for browning) in a preheated conventional oven after microwaving.

The index is difficult to use because it is subdivided into categories and is only partially cross-indexed. To find “Chewy Almond Bars” one must look, not as expected under “Cookies” or “Desserts” but under “Squares,” and then look alphabetically under “C” for “Chewy” rather than “A” for “Almond.”

Inadequate proofreading allowed a few spelling mistakes, errors in metric conversion, and some careless typesetting.