Grilled cheese made easy (and other non-problems)

Oh, thank heaven.

Genetic engineering has found a solution for those who are commitment averse.

I'm talking about the kind of people who can't come to grips with a walk down the aisle or the challenge of eating a whole apple.

Yes, I said a whole apple – apparently that's more than some people can handle.

"We know that in a convenience-driven world, a whole apple is too big of a commitment," Neal Carter, founder of the British Columbia-based company Okanagan told Associated Press.

His company plans to market a genetically modified apples that will not brown when cut, which means they can be packaged in slices.

What if Eve had been able to offer Adam a slice from a handy snack pack of apples? Instead of full banishment from the Garden of Eden, the couple might simply have been doomed to a time share during off-peak season.

The world would have only a slice of its current problems.

New, improved apples – and potatoes, too – will come to the marketplace thanks to the Food and Drug Administration's decision last week that these genetically modified foods are "as safe and nutritious as their conventional counterparts."

Don't call them Frankenfoods, anymore. Call them the solution to a problem you didn't know existed.

And it isn't just genetic engineering that can fix the unbroken. We have other products in search of a purpose.

Consider the grilled cheese sandwich.

What a hassle when your kid wants one for lunch. Really. You have to haul out a frying pan, butter two slices of bread, put cheese between them, put it in the pan. Plus you have to remember to flip it. Gee, whiz!

Who can keep track of all that?

Now you don't have to. I saw the solution in Safeway when shopping for some very old-school products called "raw ingredients." (Yes. I'm that behind the times.)

The Toastabags package promises: "Grilled Cheese made easy." All you do is put your sandwich in a bag and drop it in the toaster. "So easy," the package promises.

So don't worry. It's in the bag!

I don't know about you, but I have never regarded grilled cheese sandwiches as particularly difficult. Then again, I always figured if I didn't want the whole apple, I could put the rest in the 'fridge and trim off the brown parts later. (Besides, I've been married for 26 years, so I'm OK with the commitment thing.)

Yes. I know. I'm hopelessly 20th Century in my thinking.

Today we find apples require too much commitment and grilled cheese sandwiches are just too complex. At least the people who want you to buy their products think we do.

Now if they could just figure a way to get grapes to jump in your mouth and bananas to peel themselves.