Ever have a potato chip craving at home but didn't have the chips on hand or didn't feel like dealing with the regret afterwards? If you have a microwave and a knife, we have a way to satisfy your craving and your waistline at the same time!

I know there's a race to make electronics smaller, but this is this a little ridiculous. Inventorspot reported today on the world's smallest microwave, which made its debut at this springs Chicago International Home and Hardware Show.

The IWaveCube is so named because of its dimensions: about one cubic foot. That doesn't leave a lot of cooking space. I mean, what are you going to cook in it? The only place where I can see this being useful is in an office break room. I gather that people in an office setting generally only need to heat up small portions of food or cups of coffee, and the IWaveCube could handle that without taking up too much space.

No word on when it'll be available, if it's not already. Do you see this being a useful new kitchen tool?

Getting that crisp and tasty skin on a perfectly cooked baked potato might take a while, but there's one shortcut that can get you good results really quickly.

I feel like I'm revealing some deep, dark secret, but here goes: I microwave my salads.

Now, this isn't because I like my lettuce and carrots and salad dressing really hot, it's because of bacteria. I started doing this a couple of years ago, when we had all those recalls and scares involving pre-made bagged salads and spinach. I make my salad on a plate then zap it for about 20 seconds. Just enough to kill something but not make the salad get hot and shrivel.

Now, I have to stress that I have no idea if 20 seconds in the microwave will even do anything to destroy bacteria, but it makes me feel good anyway.

I now return you to your normal Slashfood posts.

First, let me apologize to every foodie who reads this blog. I deeply regret making this admission: I do sometimes consume microwavable food.

The new obsession is making me do it.

Black bean and jack cheese burritos from Trader Joe's.

I buy three. Over the course of a week, I eat three. I hide them from my kids. They're perfect for lunch. I work from home, blogging, blogging, blogging, and often waiting until my blood sugar is so low I can barely make it down the stairs into the kitchen. With great effort, I reach into the fridge, pull out a burrito, rip open the wrapper and slap it in the microwave. Two minutes later, I'm shoveling cheesy, beany-goodness into my pate.

I normally turn my nose up at such processed food, but (and I speak here as a native Los Angeleno and lifelong burrito lover), these taste pretty darn good. The cheese melts, the beans taste fresh, the tortilla is firm yet moist....it's the next best thing to running out and buying a fresh burrito. And God knows I'm not taking the time to do that.

Give it a try. Keep a couple of these babies in your fridge for when you need a quick bite. You'll be grateful. And let me know what you think.

It wasn't until I started cooking meals from scratch on a regular basis that I discovered just how much of a fallacy this whole pre-made foods business is. I'm not talking about one of those tasty, pre-roasted chickens or fresh meals you can buy at the supermarket, but rather canned and frozen foods. They are great in a pinch, but they are not a big time saver, and they're certainly not a decent substitute for fresh foods.

So, reading Astin Cubed's post on "Simple Food" today was like reading a rant of my own, without the obsession with snap peas. How can so many of us have forgotten the simplicity of fresh? Or heck, even balancing the two? If you have zero time to make dinner, throw the fish sticks in the oven, boil/microwave/shred and fry some potatoes, or maybe throw some Caesar dressing on some romaine. If you have enough time to go out, wait to be served, eat, wait to pay, and come home, you certainly have enough time to cook up some pasta, fry up some chicken, make a salad, steak, or even stir-fry. Or, even take a day with some free time, make up a lasagna, and eat it during the week, month, or year.

My favorite frozen food: Using those Thanksgiving leftovers to make REAL roasted, carved turkey meals that I can eat all year.

My favorite "fast" food: Leftover fried potatoes with a fried egg on a toasted baguette.

What's yours?

Frozen burritos arrive in the freezer two ways -- either they come in "bulk" in a giant box that takes up two-thirds of your freezer space, or they come individually wrapped. At my grocery store, Tina's Burritos were on that ever-so-deceptive "club card special" for three-for-99-cents. That makes each burrito a very recession-friendly thirty-three cents, but don't think I fell for the advertising double-speak! I only bought one!

The wrapper made a very proud proclamation of "100% CHEDDAR CHEESE." There were no such matching declarations of "100% BEANS" and "100% TORTILLAS." I was worried. I was also slightly worried when the instructions indicated that a person could "cook" the burrito in the microwave oven OR the regular oven. Who would cook a single frozen burrito in the regular oven?! No one, which is why the instructions give you regular oven cooking times for those occasions in which you might be entertaining a dozen dinner guests and will unwrap each individually packaged burrito to heat in the regular oven.

The burrito was not bad for a bean and cheese burrito, but then again, I also doused the entire thing in about ¾ cup of jarred salsa. It didn't feel right to use anything but jarred salsa, by the way. Kind of like putting lipstick on a pork carnitas burrito don't you think?

The insides are in the gallery:

As Joni Mitchell so eloquently put it, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

I think she was talking about my stove.

You see, earlier this week, the gas line to my stove developed a leak. The good news? The gas company responded promptly to my frantic phone call, and switched off the gas. The bad news? Until my landlord returns from the country to inspect the site (long story), I'm stuck without a working stove.

My point in telling you all of this? I've become a slave to my Foreman grill. Salads and hummus-on-cold-tortillas only get you so far before you're craving decent, warm food.

In case any of you are ever stuck in a similar predicament, I've decided to list some of the conclusions I have come to during The Week Without A Stove:

• You can successfully cook the following vegetarian-friendly foods on a Foreman grill: tofu, polenta, onions/zucchini/eggplant, veggie patties and virtually any type of imitation meat product, toasted sandwiches
• It is impossible to cook decent pasta in a microwave
  
• The following food/imitation food products have started to appeal to me solely for their ability to heat quickly without the use of a stove/oven: Easy Mac; toaster pastries; those soups in cardboard containers; individual, microwavable oatmeal packets; 90-second rice
  

Do you consider "fish sticks and liquor" a legitimate dinner? Appreciate the radioactive glow of freeze-dried gravy? Then check out Trashy Eats. It's the blog Divine from John Waters' Pink Flamingos would have written, had "the filthiest person alive" lived in the Internet era.

The new blog features recipes for things like Bachelor Food (Betty Crocker's Potato Buds mixed frozen veggies and a flavoring packet from ramen noodles) and Frito Pie (canned chili, Fritos, cheese, onion), and reviews of stuff like Banquet Homestyle Bakes. Stuff that costs about $1 a serving and can be nuked in less time than it takes to pop open a can of Mountain Dew. Stuff that makes Slow Foods members cry.

Got your own trashy favorites? The webmaster is looking for contributions.

Now, I'm not sure if this means this is the day to buy a microwave oven or cook something in a microwave oven. I'll assume the former (though maybe this is a good day to finally replace the one you've been using for 15 years).

There are actually several books about microwaving oven cooking: Microwave Gourmet by Barbara Kafka, A Man, A Can, A Microwave, by David Joachim and Men's Health, and perhaps the first (or at least one of the first) books on microwave cooking, Richard Deacon's Microwave Oven Cookwave. Yup, the same Richard Deacon who played Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He also has one titled Richard Deacon's Microwave Cookery. Not sure if it's the same book or not.

You know how we, in all our food snobby ways, always snicker a little when we hear about those poor, ignorant people who think using the microwave oven is "cooking?"

Well, using the microwave might not actually be so bad.

According to "green" experts and The Green Book authors Thomas Kostigen and Elizabeth Rogers, microwaves are more than 4x more energy efficient than traditional ovens! If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year, we could use the saved energy to light up the entire continent of Africa for a year (not that Africa needs lighting, but you know what I mean). Keeping your microwave clean helps maximize its energy.

The hell?

Seattle is thinking about banning microwave popcorn. The Justice Center has had to be evacuated eight times in the past three years because of burnt popcorn in the microwave making the smoke alarms go off. That means over 400 employees have to be evacuated each time. It is also happening in the city's Municipal Tower.

This isn't a joke: read the memo. If the problem continues, they're going to ban it in downtown buildings.

Potato chips are, as a general rule, fried, greasy and unfortunately addictive, as illustrated by the longtime Lay's slogan "bet you can't eat just one. All these traits make them the bane of many health food activists' existences, but those same activists might go a little easier on the popular snack food if they knew you can easily make a non-fried, fat free version that is just as crispy as the "real" thing at home All you need is a microwave.

This Japanese potato chip maker allows you to make chips in the microwave. All you need to do is slice up a potato into fine rounds and place in the stand, then microwave until crisp.

It sounds implausible, but microwaving chips really does work. I've done it myself with great success thanks to the recipe for Uncle Bill's Microwave Potato Chips, which doesn't require a potato chip stand to work. The chips actually do crisp up well, especially if you take care to slice them thinly and evenly. In the photo above, the chips that I made are on the left, while the chips made with the chip-maker (not made by me) are on the right. I cut my potatoes freehand with a sharp knife, but using a mandoline will produce results even faster and guarantee consistency. Make sure to season your chips with salt and pepper or seasoning salt before microwaving them, as it is difficult to get the salt to adhere to already crisp chips.

Or it might be the very best, I don't know. #1 is probably still the Smart Ones Fire Grilled Chicken & Vegetables I reviewed last year, but this other one is coming on strong.

It's the new Boston Market Grilled Chicken with Mesquite BBQ Sauce and Ranch Mashed Potatoes. This, in a word, is fantastic. The BBQ sauce actually tastes like real BBQ sauce. The mashed potatoes, which are usually one of the worst parts of any frozen entree or dinner, are the best frozen mashed potatoes I've ever tasted. They may even be better than the powdered stuff you buy in a box (if you are prone to do that). They're not all mushy and bland tasting (or worse, crusty and styrofoam tasting). The ranch flavor adds a nice kick too.

I'm not saying you should buy this in place of any BBQ chicken and mashed potatoes you might make at home. But hey, we all eat frozen foods at one time or another during the week, so I'd have a few boxes of this in the freezer for those times.

I was cleaning out my pantry a few days ago in preparation for the holidays and ran across some octopuses in a bag. I have all kinds of strange stuff in my pantry and this isn't the most odd. It's a 6"x6"x1/2" mylar retort bag stuffed full of 5.2 oz of sauteed baby octopi. Yes, these are cooked, not frozen octopi. I don't remember buying these so they must have been hidden in the back of the pantry for eons, although the name of the store, Kam Sen, is on the package. So at least I know where I bought them. So is the price, $1.39, not a bad deal. I palpate the bag and inside I can feel each individual octopus. Firm small things about the size of gummy bears, and with just a tad more solid a feel to them. I was about to open the package to try them, but first I read the info and preparation instructions. The first thing that concerns me is that the manufacture and expiration dates are blank. These octopodes could have expired, in one way or another, many years ago. Are they safe? Will my name suddenly drop off the Slashfood Bloggers list, because I myself expire from botulism? A shiver runs down my spine and my stomach clenches into a nice little knot.