Best Use of a Microwave, Ever!

If  someone would’ve told me 10 years ago that making my fortune would involve a microwave, I’d have told them, “That’s impossible!”

I resisted even getting a microwave for many years until my teenaged son insisted that he would absolutely die without frozen burritos for an after-school snack. We all know that cooking food in a microwave destroys food nutritional value. The super high temperature that heats by sending microwaves into food, and kills bacteria in sponges in 20 seconds, can’t possibly be good for you.

But hold on. One of my first assistants in the business happened to be the granddaughter of the man who invented microwaves for the space industry. I took another look at the heating potential of the microwave and decided to swallow my pride and embrace the microwave for what it is, a tool to provide heat.

Whether you use your microwave for heating frozen burritos for starving teens, or just to clean sponges, it’s a fact that 90% of households have microwave ovens in their kitchens.

I started this business because I have cold feet. When my feet are cold, I can’t relax, and if I can’t relax, I can’t go to sleep. It’s that simple. So when I discovered a cherry pit pillow from England, I fell in love with the soothing comfort and instant heat that the cherry pitsprovide, when heated in a microwave oven for just a couple of minutes.

And yes, you can use other methods for warming them. Tradition has it that the Swiss foundry workers first used a cherry pit cushion to relieve their painful muscles. A friend of mine who grew up in Switzerland recalls her grandmother having a door on the side of her wood-burning stove where she kept sacks of cherry pits. After dinner, she would place them in the beds, under down comforters to keep the family warm on cold Swiss nights.

Cherry pit pillows have been known to be heated on hearths, radiators and the tops of wood-burning stoves, but we don’t advise that unless you’re willing to experiment at your own risk––or at the risk of scorching and burning the pillows.

However, if you’re a die-hard “will not buy a microwave” kind of person, we have come up with a safe plan to warm them in a conventional oven. It’s easy: preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place your Hot Cherry pillow in a glass baking dish. Open oven, position baking dish on the center rack, close door and turn off oven. You would never want to have the cloth pillow in an oven with an open flame, or electric element. While the oven is cooling down, the cherry pit pillow is heating up, approximately 10-15 minutes. You may have to experiment with the time and temperature because ovens have different insulation. So, you can heat Hot Cherry pillows in your conventional oven.

Some Hot Cherry customers who don’t want a microwave in their kitchen where they might be tempted to use them for food preparation, have their microwave ovens in the laundry room. Now, that’s a fresh idea!

If you’re considering buying a microwave, look into the flatbed type. (Email us if this interests you, we have a great source.) They have no turntable and the microwaves come from rotating beams below the surface. They were popular when microwaves first came out, then the style disappeared replaced by the rotating carousel. But for our purposes of only using the microwave for heating Hot Cherry pillows, the flatbed is the best. You don’t need to be careful about where you place the pillow. We do recommend the Amana RMS10DS Stainless Steel Commercial Microwave, a very simple version, just perfect for warming Hot Cherry pillows.

With regular turntable/carousel type microwave ovens, you must be sure that the pillow is in the center of the microwave. If they extend over the turntable, then the pillow could brush up against the wall and stop the rotation. Or it could cause the turntable to slip to the side. In either case, this prevents the turntable from rotating and the microwaves beam down on the same spot over and over. This can cause a burn hole in the fabric, or worse yet, a fire in the microwave! So please be careful when heating Hot Cherry pillows in microwave ovens with turntables.

Follow our instructions, adjust when needed, and enjoy the instant relaxation of the moist penetrating heat of Hot Cherry therapeutic pillows. It’s the best use of a microwave oven, ever!