Preparation of Foods: Stone Age to Space Age

★★★★ · Mmm! Asparagus! · Spuzz · 2004-03-10

A) Ignore the review below mine. B) This interesting and bizarrely paced film talks about how people began cooking their food more efficiently. From Fire (which is still being used thanks to some footage of New Guinea tribesmen), The film stops a bit and talks about Steam cooking and electric cooking, but the REAL focus is Microwave Ovens! I guess they were just being introduced, as the shill is really heavy about the wonders of the 'wave. Prepare Shrimp tails in a minute! Defrost your cake! It also seemed that they were throwing in tin foiled items in it as well, but I could be wrong. Oh…

★★★★ · Wave of the future! · momgoose · 2006-05-22

Really heavy on the NASA and moonwalks, but it was made right after the Apollo landing, so the bent towards all that high technology is understandable. I believe that Amana (who made the original Radar Range or microwave) had finally allowed other manufacturers to use the microwave technology around that time. Microwaves have been around a while. Hence, the focus on it. You do see the cooks taking a foil wrapped dish from an oven, but that's not a microwave, that's a quartz or infrared oven. It's basically a light that warms the food up. This is all rah-rah, there's no mention of the needed…

★★★ · The amazing microwave oven · trafalgar · 2004-03-16

This comes from Litton Industries, which makes consumer electronics, but is also a defense contractor (maybe that's the NASA connection). Like many films here, this one makes it's subject seem like the absolute pinnacle of man's achievements--"cooking without heat!" And once again, FP's review has nothing to do with the film.

★★★ · Microwaved Escaloped Apples · Dodsworth the Cat · 2024-08-10

Who would have known that a little tube used to power radar tracking stations could also power a microwave oven? Narrator Les Tremayne does, as he takes us through a tale of little progress in cooking food from cave times until, half-way through this film, NASA put people on the moon. The second half consists mainly of people putting stuff into a microwave and concludes with a wishful hope about technology. The short features stock footage, recreations, and pans over photos and drawings. There's innocuous light music in the background during the NASA lunar lab kitchen scenes. Litton…

★★★ · Lobster, Lobster, and more Lobster! · betabox · 2007-09-24

I love my microwaves, and I use them regularly for thawing, warming, melting, and such-like cooking tasks. But LOBSTER? Cupcakes? Eeeeeew! "Steaming" asparagus works great, thawing frozen cake (if you have some odd desire to eat reheated frozen cake) would work fine, but they mention how microwaves (and quartz ovens) are good for preparing lobster three seperate times in the film. Was this a big concern in 1969? I don't even like lobster. They also show the remarkable speed with which cupcakes can be made to rise. To be fair, they don't actually claim that the cupcake would be edible after…