If you’re expecting any sort of answer to this, I haven’t got one. I went to Google, typed in “Why did my ready meal explode?” and guess what… Nothing. Complete fiasco. Over three million explanations as to why men are so selfish, but not one person on the entire world wide web can tell me why my dinner blew up.
One thing I can say is that the problem isn’t my microwave. I’ve had years of trouble-free use out of it – just like the instruction manual said I would. So there was only one thing for it. Write a stiff letter to the meal manufacturer, demanding some damn good answers – and some money, obviously. One of my favourite ever things to do is writing letters of complaint, so as you might imagine, I’ve finished already – less than an hour after my ordeal. For the benefit of anyone who has to contend with an exploding dinner in the future, I’ve published my letter as a template…
Dear Sir/Madam,
Your 100% chicken breast ready meal has ruined my dish cloth, my weekend, and my image as a man who is basically in control of his own microwave.
As I understand it, the idea behind a ready meal is that you freeze it, then heat it, and then consume it. So, question 1: how is one supposed to consume a meal when it has exploded? Question 2: how does a chicken supreme fill a kitchen with smoke? Question 2b: how is one supposed to explain away a kitchen which looks and smells like it’s hosting a bonfire, to a guest?????
Incidentally, please do not answer these questions. I am being rhetorical, and sarcastic, and the last thing I need is a list of suggestions on how best to scrape the charred remains of a chicken supreme off the interior walls of a microwave and then attempt to eat them. Equally, I do not wish to receive a choice of slick party-piece lines which can be issued to guest from a stinking, smoke-filled kitchen.
What I am looking for, is an explanation, an apology, and compensation. And when I say compensation, I do not mean a voucher for another one of your exploding meals. Apart from the fact that I do not want another exploding meal, a voucher would force me to go to the shop and have a conversation with the shopkeeper, which would inevitably result in me admitting that my dinner exploded and that I’ve lost control of my life. I would walk in a respected customer, and walk out an incompetent idiot who has managed to blow up his own kitchen with what’s essentially a few cuts of chicken and some sauce. So when I say compenstation, I mean cash. And when I say an explanation, I mean I want to know how, scientifically, chicken can explode.
Moving onto more serious matters… If, as I suspect, your ready meal contained an explosive such as dynamite or horse crap, does that not technically make it a bomb? And if it does, could I have been sent to prison for transporting it home from the shop? Had I been stopped and searched, and had the police taken the step of analysing my dinner for explosives, it is my belief that I could have been jailed forever under the War-on-Terror act or whatever it’s called.
So I do not want a paragraph of weasel words expressing how seriously you take the issue of exploding dinners and how you will investigate this rigorously, making every effort to find out what happened. I know what happened! My dinner blew up! I have not tried to grill a firework. I have merely subjected a frozen chicken supreme to four minutes in a microwave, and now my kitchen looks like someone’s tried to launch the Space Shuttle in it. Deal with this as a matter of priority or I will troll you on Twitter!
Yours,
B Leggitt.
Posted by: Bob Leggitt
This article is for entertainment purposes only.