2012-06-13-Microwave
Seminars@Hadley
Microwave Magic
Presented by
Dawn Turco
Patti Jacobson
Moderated by
Shirley McCracken
June 13, 2012
Announcer:
You’re listening to Seminars at Hadley. This seminar is Microwave Magic. Presented by Dawn Turco and Patti Jacobson. Moderated by Shirley McCracken.
Shirley McCracken
I want to welcome all of our participants today to Seminars@Hadley. My name is Shirley McCracken and I will be your moderator for today’s seminar. Our topic today is Microwave Magic. Our presenters are Dawn Turco who is the Senior Vice-President of Hadley, and Patti Jacobson.
Patti has been with Hadley for eighteen years. She teaches the food series ‘Independent Living’ using raised markers and guide dogs. She has loved to cook since she was a little girl when she could help her mom in the kitchen.
Dawn is the Senior Vice-President of Hadley and I believe she has been with Hadley for nineteen years. She was also an educational consultant for AFB and was the principal at the Missouri School for the Blind. She also enjoys cooking.
Today’s topic will cover some of the things that we will cover today are safety tips, common cooking methods, and some great recipes for the microwave. At this point I would love to turn the seminar over to Dawn and Patti so that we can all get a lot of great information.
Do you recall getting your first microwave? I’m going to fill you in on the history because it’s a little bit surprising, perhaps, for some of us how far back the history goes. We go back to 1946 when a gentleman by the name of Dr. Percy Spencer basically pulled the idea of the microwave out ofhis pocket. And I’ll explain that. Dr. Spencer was an engineer for the Raytheon Company out of Massachusetts. And the Raytheon Company was doing a lot of research and inventions that were used for other purposes, as is often the case with today’s inventions. The microwave is a by-product of another technology and the technology is related to something called the magnetron. Again, this was back in the ‘40s and the Raytheon Company developed this magnetron for use during the war. It was a part of radar systems for pin-pointing radar. So the allies used it in World War II.
Well, after the war they continued to do research on the magnetron and it was during that research one day that Dr. Spencer kind of had his accident that resulted in the microwave discovery. They were working on a test and, for any chocolate lovers listening today you’re going to love this part, there is a chocolate connection to the microwave’s development. He got a hankering for a chocolate bar that he knew he had slipped into his pocket earlier in the day. So as he reached in to pull out the chocolate bar, he basically got chocolate sauce. It had really completely melted in its package in his pocket.
Dr. Spencer thought, no, this is not just related to body heat. He felt that it had something to do with the heat-producing magnetron that he had been working on. So the scientist that he was, he decided to take this theory a little bit further. Dr. Spencer sent for a package of un-popped popcorn. He put this popcorn in front of the magnetron tubes and, wouldn’t you know, the popcorn started popping up into the air and all over the floor. So he had quite a mess in the lab that day.
Still wasn’t totally convinced, so he thought he’d do one more test. Dr. Spencer decided to cook an egg, which he placed in front of the magnetron tube once again and in short order the egg exploded all over a colleague who was standing there with him. When we get to safety tips about cooking and cooking methods, we’re going to talk about how you do not put an entire egg in its shell in front, or in this case now in, the microwave.
You know, those tests kind of led to the idea that maybe they had something here. So the Raytheon Company developed what became the first microwave oven, and this thing was a mammoth size and weight. Quite honestly, some restaurants started using it in the military because of its ability to cook food fast or heat food fast but it wasn’t something that hit the mass market at the get-go. In 1952, Tappan introduced a home use model. Now this is ’52 remember, and it was priced at just under $1,300 so I’m wondering how fast people ran to that as well. But it did become a little bit more popular.
Later, then, in 1965, the Raytheon Company acquired Amana and they developed a microwave oven which was the table top version. And they cost it out at just under $500, so it was smaller, table-top, and cheaper; interest picked up. By 1976, basically the microwave oven became as common in kitchens, and in fact a little bit more common, than dishwashers. And I believe it reached about 60% of the homes in the United States.
So basically, by the ’70s – and I’m looking, we have some people who got their first ones in the ‘70s – how we cooked was beginning to change as a result of the microwave oven. Today of course we have much cheaper, digital, not only counter-top but under counter and over the range, so as I said it’s become a standard piece of our many, many kitchens.
And if you are curious what happened later with Dr. Spencer – remember he was back in the ‘40s and ‘50s – well Dr. Spencer continued at the Raytheon Company until his death at the age of 76. And it was on September 18th 1999, Dr. Percy Spencer was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. So Dr. Spencer has taken his place alongside such other notables as Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers.
So that’s the history. I hope you enjoyed it. I find it kind of fascinating. Looking at our list, hmmm, some recent people, but we have a few who have gone back in time and I think I will fall in the early 1980s by the time I got my own microwave. So anyway, that’s the history. And now I’ll pass off the microphone to Patti.
Patti Jacobson
You know, there’s about 29 of us – 35 including the presenters – in the room today and I was at a party the other night on somebody’s beautiful deck with a waterfall and there were about thirty of us, and I sort of picture all of us sitting out on the deck, with a glass of lemonade, not worrying about heating up our kitchen and sweating over a hot oven because we’re going to cook with the microwave.
I want to talk a little bit about how the microwave works. It’s sort of a mystery. You think of a little box and a little window, pushing a few buttons, and voila, you have food in a couple of minutes. It’s called a microwave because it uses very high frequency, short, small, micro radiowaves and these cause the food molecules to vibrate and this creates friction and heat. These radiowaves are short, like I said, and that’s why they call it a microwave. They travel very fast through non-metal containers and cook food from top to bottom and on the sides, all at the same time. They are especially good for summer; fast, like I said, not heating up the kitchen, and there is a wide variety of microwave foods that are available.
I am going to talk a little bit about selecting a microwave and microwave accessibility for blind people. Some of the older models still have dials and you can mark them sort of like the face of a clock. You could use raised markers or maybe toothpicks to make little lines for the different minutes. But most microwaves nowadays have the flat panels and they are about as inaccessible as our stereo systems and TV systems. They required either marking with Braille or raised markers.
There is a Panasonic model with limited availability that has buttons and you’ll just have to kind of shop around or maybe go online to see if you can find that. Lowes does carry a GE model that has a textured panel but the texturing is not very discernible if you have maybe difficulty with your sense of touch.
A lot of the advanced cooking features are inaccessible and knowing how much time is left on the microwave is not accessible. So, like, if you’re cooking something for five minutes, what you might want to do is get a Braille or tactile timer or talking timer and set if for maybe two and a half minutes – like if you have to stir or rotate the food halfway between times – because you’re not going to be able to see the microwave running down its time to know how much time it has left.
I think that the use of Braille as marking on the microwave makes it crowded. There are too many features on microwaves nowadays to mark easily with Braille. Raised markers, I think, are easier. You can use clear ones, that way you get the availability of sighted people in your family to be able to also use the microwave. I would mark the most used features. Don’t try to mark every feature because there are probably some things that you are not going to use.
Some people mark the numbers; they’ll mark all ten of the numbers. Some of them will mark in columns, like they’ll mark – you know how the numbers on a microwave are arranged like telephone dial pad? – and they might mark the one and three, four and six, seven and nine, and maybe the zero. Some people decide to mark the two – let me see, what would that be – two, five, eight, and zero. Other people, like me, I have all of my numbers marked. So it’s just kind of what you want, but try to keep the marking as simple as you can.
Clean the panel of the microwave with a little bit of denatured alcohol on a cotton ball before you put the markers on and that way you have a real clean surface and the markers are going to stay.
Another option is the talking microwave. They’re not real readily available. There is one made by Hamilton Beach and you can get them at places like Independent Living Aids, perhaps Maxiaids, some of those places. And then some resources for raised markers would be Independent Living Aids, Maxiaids, Exceptional Teaching Aids, the LS&S Group. I’m not sure if I included those in the resource list that we will be having but I will add those to the resource list if we don’t have those.
Ok, we’re going to have a little break for questions and answers. I’m going to send it back to Shirley.
Shirley McCracken
Thank you Patti and Dawn. Does anyone have any questions? The only comment that I saw in the chat room was that someone did mention that there was a microwave, a talking microwave, available at Walmart online for less than a hundred dollars, but not available in the store. And somebody else also mentioned that the Panasonic models have a Braille overlay that people can put over theirs. But that does required sighted assistance because it has to be cut. So anyone have any questions? I’m going to release the mic to see if you have any questions.
Theresa wrote in the chat room that there is a talking microwave that costs less than a hundred dollars. It was available through Walmart online but not in the stores. Any other questions?
Margaret
Yes, hi, this is Margaret. Good morning to everyone. This does limit the selection somewhat but I have often used, bought, a microwave that had a turntable because then it cuts out some of the guesswork about the food, about needing to rotate food, because it is turning automatically. But it does somewhat limit the selection of microwaves that you have to choose from. Thank you.
Dawn Turco
This is Dawn. You’re absolutely right. Many of the models today have the turntables so they’ve kind of simplified that for us and we’ll talk about rotating food and what have you when we get to some of the cooking methods and tips. But you know, in the older days too – and these are harder to find – the heat controls were a knob and oftentimes they clicked so you kind of knew exactly what power you had it set at, or it was much less complicated than the more modern day ones.
On my microwave oven you can push ‘Baked potato’, ‘Popcorn’, and that sort of thing, and I next to never use those. So when Patti was saying maybe you don’t need to label everything I was relating to it because I kind of like to set my own times and monitor. But if you go to the store, sometimes just walking around the appliance store where the microwaves are, some of the screens are slightly more tactile than others, where the buttons themselves or the numbers themselves are a little rougher feeling than the smoothness around them. So it’s a matter of doing your research.
We did, on the resource page, put a few places where you can find the talking variety but when I asked one company they said they were no longer producing it so it is a matter of searching to find those. They are the table-top variety and a little bit smaller so you make some compromises there too. Here we go with the microphone.
Linda Perry
Hi, this is Linda Perry, one of the Hadley instructors. I just wanted to say that some of the screens that are completely flat, nothing to feel, if you have somebody who is really good at measuring space, and they’re familiar with how much space Braille cells take up, there is a way to take something like Braille labels or one of those sheets of sticky clear labeling paper, and if you Braille just at the right spots on it that the person indicates for you, you can make a template for your microwave so that everything is where it should be, as much as you can label everything on the microwave panel.
Sometimes you have to abbreviate because the person has to be able to tell how much space you really can use. That’s what I have and I think another teacher at Hadley has that. It’s really neat just to slap it on there but you do have to clean it and you do have to have somebody who is good at handling it and setting it down just right so it lines up.
Shirley McCracken
There is a question in the chat room. It’s from Maryanne. She wants to know: Does GE still offer their overlays too? Can anyone respond to that? Dawn or Patti?
Patti Jacobson
Yes, I believe they still do.
Linda Perry
This is Linda again. Hadley has at least one and maybe two microwaves in the building that we got the kits for, but we’ve had them a while so I hope they’re still doing it. I think they are.
Shirley McCracken
One other question in the chat room is from Marsha. She wants to know: Could you tell me what each of the numbers on the number pad, one through nine, stand for? Like, ‘Keep warm’, ‘Defrost’, ‘Low’, etc. please? And then a comment from Hilda: Maxiaids does offer a talking microwave.
Dawn Turco
Yes, we have the Maxiaids site listed on the resource list and for those – there are a couple of new people, I know, today – we are posting a resource list with this seminar on the Hadley webpage. When the recording goes up, there will be a resource page with lots of links to the sites we talk about and some fun recipes. So that is something to watch for.
As far as the overlays with the particular manufacturer, I would always just go directly to the manufacturer and see if they do indeed provide them. And then regarding the keypad and what do the numbers mean? That’s going to depend on the microwave. It’s not like a phone where each number means a letter of the alphabet.
Now on my microwave the numbers are simply there to set the time and there is a way that you can set the cook power, whether you are going to be on a lower heat or the higher power. It goes from one to ten cooking power and that’s how you set it through the keypad. But, individually, I think your going to have to look at your microwave. I’m releasing the mic in case Patti has another thought there.
Patti Jacobson
Usually your recipe will say “Cook at fifty percent power,” or “Thirty percent.” Thirty percent is something you might melt chocolate on. Fifty percent is about something you would defrost something on. And one hundred percent is high. Fifty percent would be considered about medium. So those correspond with the numbers on your keypad. Each microwave is set a little bit differently but for fifty percent, you’d hit a power level and then a five, or you’d have to learn the sequence for your own microwave as far as how you set it. But five would be fifty percent. Three would be thirty percent, etc.