Serving

Every family seems to have a special way of slicing sandwiches for kids' lunches. Sometimes, it involves removing crusts. Other times it's a question of cutting sandwiches into "fingers." The Critter Cutters offer a way to pack your kid's lunch with extraspecial sandwiches. The cutters cut animal shapes in sandwiches: a butterfly, a dog, elephants, and dolphins. You're not just cutting a shape out of the center of a sandwich, either. The shapes take up a full sandwich, while still creating a sliced sandwich that is easier for little hands to pick up. The cutters … Read more

Whenever I bake a pie, my husband threatens to pull out a protractor to make sure we get even slices. The Progressive International Collapsible Pie Cutter makes it possible to achieve perfect slices without having to go to all that trouble. You can add or remove dividers to the pie cutter so that when you place it on top of the pie and push down, you can get two, four, six, or eight even slices. With a little planning, you can even reconfigure the slicer so that you get uneven slices if, for instance, one guest wants just a smidgen … Read more

Certain desserts call for a sifting of a little something over them: powdered sugar on brownies, or spices on custard, for example. But I don't really want to get out my sifter or, more often after making dessert, clean it out, just to make sure that dessert looks special. The Powdered Sugar Sifter Spoon offers an easier option, letting you tap just a little sugar or spice out over a dish, without having to deal with a big sifter.

The Powdered Sugar Sifter is stainless steel, with a design not so different from the typical spoon. The handle is … Read more

Twirling spaghetti around a fork is a skill that can require a little practice, but you can speed up the process with the Twirling Spaghetti Fork, which costs around $10. Slide it into a pile of spaghetti and turn it on: the Twirling Spaghetti Fork is motorized and will wind your pasta around the tines of the fork. It requires two AAA batteries (which are not included) to operate. They seem to last for quite a while, considering that you really should turn off the fork in between bites. Leaving it running could make getting the spaghetti back off the … Read more

It may be a little early, but I'm already keeping my eyes open for the first plants shooting up in my garden this spring. I'm ready for warmer weather and that fresh green color that seems to take over the whole yard. The Salad Plant Salad Servers may be the closest I come for the next few months, however. They're certainly the right shade of green and the handles look like those first little leaves that poke up. The salad serving set was designed by Martin Blum and Dan Black to mimic the early shoots of spring. … Read more

No matter what you've got on the carving board, it always seems to slide around. You can wind up awkwardly trying to pin a roast in place with one hand while carving off slices with the other. The Gripper Carving Board can make the project easier: it's designed to hold food in place as you slice. A removable metal ring sits in a groove built in to the center of the cutting board. The ring has four points that sink into your food, anchoring it into place. It works well with meat and poultry, but the points will … Read more

More than a few restaurants seem to have some kind of artistic genius working on salads: plates come out with artfully arranged vegetables, decorated with curls of carrots and other items that could be garnish, or could be part of the salad, or could even be both. Apparently there not just an art to making those ribbons of carrots. There's also a special tool involved. The Carrot Curler enables you to make ribbons of carrot yourself. Slide a carrot into the tool and turn sideways--the Carrot Curler uses a small blade to separate ribbons from the carrot sticks, adding … Read more

I'm kind of a klutz. I can set a beautiful table, and then drip salsa on it the first time I dip a chip into the bowl I've so carefully set out. Even if you personally are more graceful than I, you probably have friends or occasional guests who share my clumsiness. The CaliBowl from SimpleWave will keep your table looking lovely by preventing drips and spills.

The simple, patent-pending design features an inward-curving lip--the company compares it to the tide of a wave--that scoops food and dips onto your chip, utensil, or food, or back into the … Read more