TOP TEN THINGS YOU DO NOT MICROWAVE

10) Do not microwave anything with metal in it. This includes light bulbs. Curiosity be damned. You don't need to clean up after it.

9) Do not microwave non food items. It might be interesting to watch a plastic tube off toothpaste undulate and squeeze and puff up, but you will have to clean up afterward.

8) Things with shells. This would include clams, oysters and other shelled mollusks. They explode because there are small bits of air enclosed in their shells. Crabs seem to be unaffected, as are lobsters.

7) Do not not microwave eggs. They explode. And as for whole eggs outside of the shell, the yolk explodes, too.

6) Do not microwave blue cheese. It melts it, and turns the cheese into a pile of blue goo without any texture. It also releases all of the moldy blue cheese odor. All at once. And the cloud of odor will drive you out of the house. I will not try to microwave Limburger cheese for any reason, unless it is to win a bet. A large one.

5) Just because you can microwave popcorn doesn't mean you can heat up whole corn: it explodes. That's how they developed microwave popcorn. Ears of corn, still wrapped with the husk can be microwaved, but not the canned single kernels. (and not with the can either.)

4) Certain other foods, like canned tuna fish, also tend to pop and blow up all over the interior of the microwave.

3) My wife lists fava beans and whole shelled fresh chestnuts as "good for splattering". You have to put holes in them first.

2) Do not attempt to dry your clothing in the microwave. Certain fabrics will only melt.

1)Mustard. Clears your sinuses unintentionally.

0) Plastic sponges. It might be nice to dry them quickly, but this won't help.

-1) I know some people love hot peppers. But please do not ever microwave a habanero pepper, and never ever microwave a Naga Jolokia (they're 4 times hotter than the former). What you will get is the second hand experience of being hit by pepper spray. My son cooks burgers with the Naga Jolokia in a frying pan and it can leave you breathless.

I did have an online discussion with a woman who insisted she could microwave eggs, but I discovered she lived at a slightly higher elevation than Delaware's flatland sea level. Water boils at a lower temperature at higher elevations, and the eggs would cook at different rate. I suppose someone else could add to this discussion.

Anyone else have discoveries?

16 November 2010