yitayningwut- thanks for your thougtful reply. your rov is absolutely right- to cover the food. As a matter of precaution, I always cover the food to be “microwaved”, so there is no splatter. you are also correct in saying that the walls of the microwave never attain “jad soledes bo” (try it and you will see) because the mechanics of the microwave is different than cooking. from what was told to me, it “shakes’ the molecules and in this way heats it. because they are “micro” waves they don’t touch mroe than the food and the rest of the “oven” remains fairly cool. the utensil in which the food is stored does get hot- so clearly you cannot use the same pot because it would be ‘bolea’. the actual oven, however, is not hot enough.
as far as the “zeia’ this is a tough sugya and-for whatever reason- R’moshe was machmir on this, especially in a regular oven. I never understood this psak because the shulchan aruch clearly does nto consider ‘reiach’ ossur, and the aspect of ‘zeiah’ is not mentioned in that sugya. i’d like to hear from R’moshe’s talmidim where he found the idea of ‘zeiah’ in an oven.