Food for Fraught

Last night I went hungry. Unable to sleep, and with a rumbly stomach, I got up to do some cooking. Now when I say 'cooking', I of course mean 'warming up'; reheating is about the limit of my culinary skills, and, to me, a three course dinner consists of boiling the kettle, turning the oven up and programming the microwave. So anyway I raided the freezer for a frozen ready meal, a chicken korma as it happens, pierced the film and put the plastic-covered ice block into the magical meal warmer. It was then that I got a very nasty shock. A misprint on the packaging resulted in the category B instructions being exactly identical to the Category E instructions!!! 4 minutes each! How can that ever be? Clearly there is a vast 150w of power difference between them! Something was quite obviously amiss. Being the resourceful, independent, sleep-deprived young man that I am, I decided the only course of action was to take this matter to the highest authority. And as we all know, there is no authority higher than the Sainsbury's Customer Careline! (Which as a bonus happens to be a freephone number!) So at 3.30am I dialed it up and spoke to a lovely woman called Joanna. She called up the details on her screen and sure enough was as flummoxed as I. Not to worry, she said, err on the side of caution, give it the full 4 minutes. Well, she sounded very reassuring, so I bid her goodnight and tapped in the digits. When the food came out, the plastic film had melted to the chicken, the tray was glued to the plate, and the curry was bubbling away like molten lava. I considered calling Joanna back and informing her of her erroneous judgement (and also possibly seeing if she was free Friday night), but fortunately my cat walked in and gave me a look of such withering contempt, that I hastily agreed to go to bed and grow up.