My microwave arrived

My microwave arrived on my porch unannounced, where I found it later, unstolen. It's a beauty.  The Control Panel is a paragon of simplicity-- a top dial for power and a bottom dial for 1-30 minutes. Period. It starts when you close the door after dialing up the minutes, and stops when you open the door or the timer dings when it reaches zero. There are no stupid, incomprehensible pictures.  On my recently departed model, for instance, it had a picture, among many, of a pizza slice.  What did that mean?  Push here to heat up a slice of pizza left over from the night before?  Or push here to cook a frozen pizza? 

I even read the user manual, in about 3 minutes, and it told me a few things I didn't know, like, it cooks from the inside walls in, so arrange the heartier items, like meat hunks, closer to the outside of the rotating plate and the more delicate items, like asparagus tips, on the inside of the plate.

It had a couple of useful charts, Utensil Guide of what you Can Use (microwave browning dishes), Cannot Use (glass jars), and Limited Use (narrow aluminum foil strips to cover tender parts like wings on a chicken) in the microwave; and Safety Information (Can Use--wax paper) (Cannot Use--wood) (Limited Use--wood).  You have to read a little further into the chart to understand why you can, and cannot, use wood inside it so I think stay away from wood (it dries out and could ignite).

The best chart detailed the six power settings in terms of Power Output--Low 17%, Defrost 40%, M. Low 48%, Med. 66%, M. High 85% and High 100%. The power knob is set up like a clock--turn clockwise to the end (High) and leave it there. The manual did explain Defrost, which I had never bothered with before. "MW energy heats up outside surface of the food and this heat moves slowly into center. This thaws the food evenly." Good to know. 

The short manual, written in good, comprehensible English, did have a picture or two, like the helpful picture in the short Installation Guide showing--plug it in.

Under Set Up & Use the manual listed and briefly described Cooking Techniques, the five headings being self-explanatory: Arrangement; Shielding ("with narrow strips of aluminum foil to avoid overcooking [delicate parts]"); Turning; Standing (the food once taken out, not you); and Adding Moisture. 

The Troubleshooting Guide was informative: Trouble--Oven will not start, Possible Cause--Electrical cord not plugged in, Possible Remedy--Plug it in.

I loved the manual's suggestion for preventing or curing Arcing (Sparking)--"Clean cavity with wet towel."

Yep, it's a beauty, look at that clean control panel--two dials, period. And the light shuts off when you open it.

Shopping for a microwave.

Microwaves. I had a countertop 0.6 cubic foot model that lasted 17 years and handled every task I put to it--heating coffee, warming leftovers, finishing off still-slightly-raw cooked fish, cooking vegetables, baking baking potatoes. Turn the power level to High, turn the minutes dial to the desired number and hit On. If the dish started shrinking or smoking, take it out early, or if it still wasn't hot or cooked, add more minutes. It stopped working and I replaced it a few months ago. With 4 models and counting.
I went to my warehouse club knowing I wanted a 0.6 cubic foot model but their units were measured by dimension, 12 by 18 by 9 inches, or whatever, so rather than driving home to tape measure the darn thing, I bought the smallest unit. It turned out to be too big for my limited counter space (I think I eventually determined it was 1.1 cubic feet--but that helpful size-description was not listed anywhere on the sealed box) so I took it back. At the big box store I bought a 0.7 cubic foot unit with the simplest touchpad control, and trying to conjure up 40 seconds of Hot or 2 minutes of Cook on that thing's confusing sequence of sequential levels on the detailed touchpad was beyond my ability level or level of interest. Back it went as useless.
I found a stripped down floor display microwave unit of a suitable size at a Bed & Bath type store, with an even more simply laid out touchpad control for $36 and it worked fine for two months. I discovered with a little trial and error that once I had set the Cook "button" and, I think, put the Power Level on High, that if I pressed the numbers buttons correctly and hit the On button, the thing would warm the object placed inside for that length of time. It was annoying in that if you left the door open the light stayed on, if you didn't remove the food after cooking it would keep on beeping every two minutes forever, and if you removed the food before its preset time was up, you had to "cook off" the remaining time to get the touchpad clear again because the Reset button was apparently for decorative purposes only. Oh, and you couldn't set anything for less than a minute. So I had a system of cooking on it that devolved into 1-1-1 (71 seconds) for warming liquids or topping things off, 2-2-2 (2 minutes and 22 seconds) for medium duty like "browning" a piece of meat or warming last night's cooked sweet potato and 3-3-3 or 4-4-4 for vegetables or baked potatoes respectively. Hit those numbers, hit On and it performed its assigned task. Until last week. Then it inexplicably refused to respond to any touchpad pokes, it just said Clock. I started pushing all the buttons, I tried 'em all, any and all sequences of numbers and pictures, but no ingenious pattern of pushing Reset button, Arabic number buttons, Set button, pizza picture button, potato picture button, roast picture button, or On button did a thing. It was either broken or crazy. I took to calling it Hal as I evermore forcefully pushed, poked, prodded and pressed buttons in my frustrated desire to cook a broccoli crown in a plastic dish with a little water in it as my fish's 20 minutes time in the oven whiled away. I had to set up a steamer unit on my stovetop to cook the broccoli. Why did I have a microwave at all then if it wasn't going to work? I didn't know if it was broken, or in deep sleep, waiting for the Mother Circuit Board to wake the sleeping sentinel up again.
Grumbling, I contemplated touring Best Buy, Target, Walmart and Home Depot to look at more microwave units to find one that had a simple and understandable control unit that would warm things up and cook simple things like baked potatoes and vegetables. I did look forward with relish, to trash day when I would dump my non-functioning unit into my trash barrel for transport to the scrap heap. My sister listened to my bitter complaints about newfangled, incomprehensible control units that give you indecipherable pictures for tasks instead of old fashioned plain English instructions. Being more savvy and smarter than me, she apparently was googling "Microwave" and "turn knobs" as she spoke with me. "I found a half-cubic foot microwave on Amazon with a turn-knob timer for $60," she said. A light went on in my head. The turn-knob controls! One for power level, one for cooking duration. Of course!
Tomorrow I will take delivery of a small microwave unit from Amazon for under $65 with turn-knob controls. You can't dial in seconds; it only operates on minutes. But when you think it's ready, open the door and see! The light won't stay on. You can push the turn-knob back to zero, it will ding when it's there. No more Reset buttons that apparently have no function. The reviews of the unit were uniformly sterling, like "I ordered this for my 93 year-old grandmother who has a brain tumor and can no longer do simple tasks and this works just fine for her." It sounds perfect to me.
I can't wait for it to arrive so I can set the power knob permanently on High and twist the timer knob to my desired number of minutes for the task at hand and just close the door so it starts. It dings once when it's done, and you can leave the door open.