And if your answer is, “Whenever my wife gets around to cleaning it!” – congratulations, you win!

a night of sleeping on the couch, you sexist jerk…

The truth is, it takes a real man to get in there and really scrub down all of those 90-second dinners and late-night snacks … which I suppose is only fair because it’s typically one of us who made most of the messes in there in the first place!  And that’s certainly not to say that the ladies don’t enjoy themselves some rapidly nuked snackitude as well from time to time, of course, but let’s face it – of all the color-coordinated appliances scattered throughout the kitchen, there is no more guy appliance than the humble microwave.

Whether we’re talking 3am chicken wings or Friday night nachos or even something as seemingly innocent as a little dipping chocolate for a romantic fondue with the wife, this little ivory trooper has seen its share of messes beyond reasonable comprehension, that’s for sure!  Just as an example, did you know that chocolate explodes when you try to heat it up too fast … because this guy certainly didn’t! And yet it’s one of those things that seems to happen an awful lot – you set the cook timer and then get distracted with something else, only rushing back later in sheer terror after you hear that frightening *pop* that signifies the interior of the microwave has just been coated with a healthy layer of molten cheese or scalding salsa or whatever else that’s going to be an absolute bear to chisel out of there later!

I guess I don’t really mind taking this particular cleaning bullet for the team, though – I figure it’s the least I can do for having such an efficient cooking machine at my beck and call night and day, ready to fry me up some miscellaneous refrigerator leftovers at a moment’s notice should the hunger hit me and I’m unable to properly defend myself.  Frankly, it really only gets so incredibly dirty because most of us take advantage of its generous, surreal cook times – I mean, 45 seconds for pizza?  A minute and a half for an entire turkey dinner?! With that kind of turnaround, it’s a wonder that I use any of the other kitchen appliances for anything anymore…

The real key to successfully tackling this job, though, is to have a good plan of attack long before the exploded eggs and sausage and mashed potatoes ever even begin to harden onto those white, plastic walls.  In my house, we’re on a once a year, or whenever it looks really gross maintenance plan ourselves.  Then when that fateful day comes when one of us just can’t bear the thought of cooking another meal inside without fear of being assaulted by the smells and flavors of a thousand random microwave meals gone past, that’s the signal for me to whip out the old scrub brush to bring all of that hardened food particulate nastiness to justice!

Fun Tip: If you throw a wet paper towel in there and nuke it for 20-30 seconds, then just leave it for a few minutes, the added moisture will make removing even the most stubborn of foodstuffs a breeze…

See – you didn’t expect to actually learn something here today, now did you?!

Of course, sometimes I daydream of how awesome it would be if the microwave instead offered some sort of Self-Cleaning feature like the stove does … a Self-Nuking feature, if you will … but honestly I don’t even know how that idea works with the oven and the house always smells absolutely horrible afterwards.  Plus, there’s always the worry that the microwave could eventually become so hyperactive during the intensified cleansing process that eventually it just explodes into a fiery blast of unrecognizable meat and cheese fallout, the likes of which the kitchen has never seen before.

Maybe it’s best if we just stick to the old-fashioned way of cleaning up after ourselves after all, even if it does end up being really long after the fact and requires maximum scrubbing muscles to do the work that we could otherwise just do in a few seconds right after the food is done.  But the microwave, if no other kitchen appliance, understands just how valuable those precious seconds are … especially when it’s three o’clock in the morning and there’s a plate full of pipin’ hot, combination-flavor pizza rolls at stake!

So thanks, microwave – I’ll be back with this scrub brush again sometime in 2012, or shortly after the next time I make my patented Death by Nachos – whichever comes first…