A cooking state displaying apparatus and method for a microwave oven combined with a television. The apparatus includes a body sensor for sensing if there is a person near the microwave oven, and in accordance with the sensed output from the body sensor during cooking, selectively displays the current cooking state and completion on an LED displayer installed on the front side of the microwave oven or on a TV screen. Also, in accordance with the sensed output from the body sensor, a cavity lamp in the microwave oven is selectively turned on/off and the loudness of a buzzer sound for indicating completion of cooking varies. Therefore, it is convenient to use and it is possible to save power consumption.

Control device for controlling a heating apparatus, such as a microwave oven. The microwave oven has a housing 12, an enclosure 16 in which a drawer 14 that receives a product to be heated slides, the microwave oven being actuated by a handle 15 and has optical and/or optoelectronic devices 21, 22 to read a distinctive sign 6 on either the product or its packaging. A processing module 30 is included to compare signals generated from reading this distinctive sign 6 with predetermined reference signals memorized in a storage device, and a supply module 43 generates operational control signals for the heating apparatus 10 in response to the result of this comparison. The optical and/or optoelectronic devices 21, 22 have a receiving cell 22 situated at the inlet and on the upper surface of the enclosure 16, the optical and/or optoelectronic devices being energized when the drawer 14 is pushed into the enclosure 16 to thereby effectuate a reading of the distinctive sign 6 on the product to be heated.

A cooking apparatus has a display and a selector for selecting an item displayed on the display. The display displays one screen after another so as to correspond to one item after another selected thereon. The cooking apparatus further has a bookmark attachment requester for requesting attachment of a bookmark to a specific screen displayed on the display unit, a storage for storing data related to the bookmarked screen, a bookmarked screen display requesting member for requesting display of the bookmarked screens and a display controller for displaying the bookmarked screen in accordance with the data stored in the storage in response to a request from the bookmarked screen display requester.

A microwave oven includes a cooking unit for cooking food according to a cooking program for specifying cooking procedure, a cooking control data memory for storing cooking control data for controlling cooking, a selecting device for selecting one of the cooking programs and providing it to the cooking unit in response to operation by an operator, a use frequency memory for storing frequency of selection of each cooking program, a device for grouping cooking programs into groups corresponding to their frequencies of use, and a display device for displaying information related to the number of cooking programs which belong to each of the groups. The conditions of use of the cooking programs can be known easily.

A television and oven combination device includes an oven having a back wall, front wall, a pair of side walls and a top wall. A flat-panel monitor has a viewing side, a rear side, a bottom edge, a top edge and a pair of side edges. At least one monitor support is attached to the back wall of the oven. The at least one monitor support includes an elongated member having an upper end and a lower end. The elongated member is vertically orientated. A coupler is attached to the upper end for coupling the elongate member to the flat-panel monitor.