No, I Do Not Believe That Plate Is Hot Enough

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Has that ever happened to you? You’re trying to enjoy a meal, or just a plate of nachos while you’re watching your favorite TV show, and the plate is merely room temperature? Yeah, me too. Luckily for me, my new dishwasher has the coveted “Plate Warmer” feature. No more cool plates for me! No sirree Bob! Only warm plates now. I’m so lucky.

(Yeah, I know, pretty much every dishwasher ever has the “Plate Warmer” feature. Except for dishwashers made in countries they always say “the former Soviet Republic of” before they give you its name. Just work with me here. It’s a dishwasher. I really should have just said “I Got A New Dishwasher” and that could have been the title of the thread and then the whole body would be “Yay me!”, but that would be real boring, so I went with this. Actually I really just should have kept the whole new dishwasher thing a secret I only tell my Special Friends. They’d care. Or at least pretend to care to protect my fragile feelings.)

Paging through the Owner’s Manual (You have to, the first thing it says is “Read this Owner’s Manual!” It’s very insistent about that.) I found a few tips on negotiating the risks inherent to this miraculous labor saving device. I should “Load sharp knives with the handles up to reduce the risk of cut-type injuries.” Not just “cuts”, but the whole gamut of “cut-type injuries”. I guess that includes gashes and rips plus nicks and stuff. Also, I should “not touch the heating element during or immediately after use.” It doesn’t say, but I think it would probably be hot, it being a “heating element” and all. But… to touch it during use I’d have to be locked inside my dishwasher. With the door shut. Maybe if this were to ever happen, a hot heating element would not be my biggest worry. Also, the much coveted “Plate Warmer” takes “approximately 31 minutes”. Not “about a half hour” or even just “31 minutes”, but “approximately 31 minutes”. They ain’t sayin’, but they’ll give you the ballpark.

“But what if I forget to add a dish?” I can hear you ask. (Not really, but it’s a section in the Manual.) You stick it in the dishwasher, Bub. Duh! Only it’s a four step process, so you might just want to wait for the next load.

Way in the back (I read it all the way through to be an Aware Consumer. Sure.) they tell you “Service trips to your home to teach you how to use the product” are not covered in the warranty. So if you’re too stupid to use a dishwasher, it’s going to cost you to have someone come out and show you how it works. Or, I guess, you could just go to the Free Dishwashing Class and learn there.

Now I can have hot plates anytime I want. (As long as I think about it approximately 31 minutes in advance.) How about you?
-Rue.

2

Rue you – you – you consumer you!

It must be Monday, your time. Have a great week.

3

As Special Friend Numero Uno, may I congratulate you on your new toy!! No more dishwater hands for our Rue! Yay, you!

But, plate warmer? 31 minutes? This does not compute. I mean, in order to use this function, you have to keep the dishwasher free of dirty dishes, right? You don’t warm the crud right on them, do you? So you have to empty the dishwasher to warm a plate. So your desire for a warm nacho plate leads to stacks of unwashed dinnerware on the kitchen counters?

I’m sure the Little Woman loves that feature.

Here’s a nifty tip from me to you - you can warm a plate a whole lot faster if you just sit on it. More energy efficient, no stacks of congealing dishes all over the kitchen, plus it gives you a legitimate excuse for sitting for a while.

“Sorry, Soupo, Daddy can’t take you to the ice cream truck - he’s warming his nacho plate.”

:smiley:

4

What makes you think it’s Monday Icey? Maybe you’re just jumping to rash conclusions… naw, it’s Monday. I can’t lie to you. Well, I could, but I’d feel badly about it.

And speaking of rash conclusions Snickers, sometimes there’s a reason you don’t want to sit on a plate you’re going to put food on. That’s all I’m saying.
-Rue.

5

Hey, what can I say?

Somewhere, in the world, Monday is wash-day.

Here, Monday is another-Rue-thread-day.

Nice t’ know you’re regular! Have you tried, maybe, warming your dishes in a microwave?

6

Unfortunately we have one of those new fangled dishwarshers without the dial. All we have is one of those sleek Jupiter 2 inspired touch pads. Do we get a seperate dry cycle? Nooooo. If we want warm plates we need to wash them at great expense. Either that or throw them in a warm over for a few minutes.

Of course we do get the handy “lock” feature which prevents size 4T hands from accidently washing dishes or launching a thermonuclear war.

7

God invented oven-safe dishware for a reason. It’s much faster than warming it in a dishwasher…

Unless your oven is broken.

You broke your oven, too, didn’t you.

8

Warming A Plate:
Put a smidge of water on the plate. Don’t fill the plate to brimming.
Put plate in microwave.
Nuke for 10 seconds or so. Until it’s hot.
Remove plate, and wipe/pour off hot water.
It’s a warmed plate.
The end.

9

You know what I really want?

A dishwasher with a transparent door!

Who needs TV when you can watch your recent meals being sprayed from your plates?

10

They had a dishwasher with a transparent door at the dishwasher store. It wasn’t for sale though.

And ya know? I never knew I needed a warm plate for my food until I got the dishwasher with this option. Now I MUST have my plates warmed before I can enjoy my meal. I wonder if Ronco has a plate warmer…

And something else not dishwasher related…

I was flipping through the TV stations the other day and The Philadelphia Story was on. They were at the part where a drunk Jimmy Stewart goes to see Cary Grant in a bathrobe. (Jimmy was just drunk. He was wearing a tuxedo if I remember right. Cary was wearing the bathrobe. Only he had clothes on under it, so I guess it was a “dressing gown”. I’m not sure, it was in black and white.)

Anyway, Jimmy called Cary “C. K. Dexter Haven”. I said “huh”.

That’s all. We can go back to dishwashers now. Or not.
-Rue.

11

okay, back to the warm dishes thing. I think that if you’re new dishwasher can warm plates it should be able to reheat entire meals. Just go ahead and put your leftover in there, approximately 31 minutes later, voila!

A side note: when you go to a restaurant, and they bring you a plate, and they say, “watch out, this plate is really hot!” That means that your food’s been sitting under a broiler coil/warming lamp. Now sometimes that’s fine, like with french onion soup where they need the heat to melt the cheese. But if it’s just a burger and fries this means that the waiter/waitress didn’t bring you your food when it was ready. Just so’s you know.

.
.
.

Cup of coffee… check!
Rue’s making something extremely mundane sound interesting… check!

Yep, must be Monday morning here.

12

Shib, now there’s a good idea for the dishwasher. I like it…warming food in the dishwasher. Now, when I’m cooking and there’s something I need to keep warm, but I can’t use the oven cause I need the oven to cook something else, I’ll just put it in the dishwasher and turn on the plate warmer thingie. Knew there’d be a use for it one day.

So now I guess Rue will be cooking entire meals in the dishwasher. Can’t wait for that thread.

FCM you can sit on my plates anytime.

13

Step 1: Take a key off of your key ring. Make sure it’s one that has a round hole in it, and not one of those strange squares or trapezoids or ovals. You want a nice and round key.
Step 2: Palm the key. I’ll leave that step in your capable hands.
Step 3: Press the hole end of the key firmly against the flesh of your thumb for a few minutes. The end result should be a risen circle of flesh that looks like a blister.
Step 4: Waiter comes out with plate. “Careful, it’s hot!” Feign touching it with your thumb, scream that you’ve been burned.
Step 5: Show the “blister” to the waiter and insist that it shouldn’t be so hot as to cause that much of a burn in under a second.
Step 6: Enjoy your free lunch.

14

I’ve heard you could (note: you could) cook a fish in the dishwasher. You double wrap it in aluminium foil (in the U.S.- tin foil) and run it through the regular cycle. Then you have a cooked fish and a clean (and hot!) plate to eat it off of.

It sounds like the Perfect Plan.
-Rue. (wondering if he can warm a can of chili in the dishwasher)

15

Ya know, swampbear, I think the world of you, and I’d do anything for you… well, not anything, but I would toss you an approved flotation device if you were drowning. I’ve been known to sit on my hands when they were cold, but a line must be drawn and I have drawn it. Therefore, I respectfully decline the honor of sitting on your dinnerware. But I’ll gladly warm your oatmeal bowl into my toaster over…

[sub]does that sound as dirty to you as it does to me??[/sub]

16

Rue - here’s an idea for you: Years ago when I was a baby sailor, one of the other baby sailors wanted to make herself some chili. Back in those days, any sort of cooking in the barracks was strictly forbidden, and if your hotplate or coffee pot was found, you’d be in deep doo-doo. Nita, my friend, took her iron (you know - the thing you use to get the wrinkles out of your Sunday clothes) and set it hot side up, nested in her guitar case neck. She opened the can of chili and set it on the hot face of the iron. Eventually, she had hot chili. In the meantime, I ordered pizza and it was delivered before her stuff got warm. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

One can’t help but wonder - is there a stove in Casa DeDay??

17

When you get bored trying to cook with non-traditional kichen appliances, you could always try the car.

18

Not necessarily. Heating plates to keep food warm is a well-used restaurant technique. Think about it - stuff like vegetables can get cold in the trip from the kitchen to the table, even if they’re immediately taken from the cookpot to the plate to the customer. A hot plate will prevent this.

That said, I’m with fairychatmom. WTF? Any dinner that I serve that’s fancy enough for me to want warm plates usually involves messy pots and pans in the dishwasher. No way I’m gonna keep the dirty dishes out of the dishwasher so I can warm the plates, especially since you can easily throw 'em in the oven or microwave to warm 'em.

19

In your toaster over what? Oh, and I don’t like oatmeal, cept for oatmeal cookies and it’s ok as a filler for meatloaf, but it’s just gross sitting around all gray and lumpy looking in a bowl, so how bout warming my grits bowl in your toaster over…

[sub]and, yes, that does have dirty overtones to it, specially the over…part. I am all a titter[/sub]

20

rats… it was s’posed to say toaster oven… and I even previewed…

<sigh>