Max the Chef

I was almost finished folding a load of laundry when Max comes stumbling up the stairs with the bag of 30 tortillas in one hand, and the 2lb pound of cheese in the other. He made his way up to me and said 'ta-teee-ya cheeeeese'. It wasn't lunch time and I knew he wasn't starving. All I needed was 5 minutes to finish the load. Just 5 minutes... So I said 'not yet Max. Please wait 5 minutes for me to finish folding the laundry... He was surprisingly calm about the whole thing and turned around and went downstairs. It was the reaction I wanted, but didn't expect. I took it as it was and finished the laundry. And all seemed well when I was finished folding so I took the liberty to put the folded laundry away. Just 5 minutes more... That is when Max came back upstairs... Empty handed... And looking confused... He said 'my ta-teee-ya all gone?!!!' I was so confused at the statement, but it isn't the first time I've been confused by Max. So I went down with him and fully expected to make him his tortilla with cheese in the microwave for 30 seconds and roll it up so he could eat it after blowing on each bite so it wouldn't be hot.
That's when my nose started working, half way down the stairs. I smelled smoke and my brain added things together pretty quick. He ran ahead to the microwave where the bar stool had been pulled up to and said 'see mommy, my ta-teee-ya all gone!!!' Sure enough you couldn't see it in the microwave because all you could see was black smoke billowing out of the microwave and spilling into the kitchen and leaking through to the rest of the house. When the smoke finally cleared, you could see it all. Max made himself a tortilla because he apparantly couldn't wait for me. There was cheese sprinkled all over the counter sitting beside the opened bags. In the microwave was a black lump in the center of the turntable. No plate. He missed that step I guess. The turn table was so hot I had to use a hot pad to take it out and dump it in the sink. I scraped and wiped and cleaned the microwave and turn table and it still stunk and had black marks. I tried so hard to get all the tortilla cheese mess off of the turn table. It was stuck hard. How long did he cook that thing????? He was so worried about what he had done. It was kinda cute to watch, if he hadn't just ruined the microwave!!!

The good news is that it is just a temporary microwave we have been using on the counter until we could replace our over the range microwave. The bad news is that I don't think we will be using this microwave again, it was pretty bad. The picture doesn't do it justice, and you can't smell it... So we are microwaveless for a little while. We can get by without it, right?