Cooking

Move over scratch 'n' sniff, here's Peel 'n Taste

First Flavor Inc. has developed a new way to entice potential customers into trying new products: with Peel 'n Taste flavored advertising. Soon you'll be able to stroll down the aisle of your local supermarket and try before you buy.

This updated version of the scratch 'n' sniff sticker being created by First Flavor is a new way to market and advertise products. According to the company: "Using the latest in taste-matching technology, we replicate the flavor of your product and deliver it to consumers in a compact, dissolving edible film." The actual flavor strip can then … Read more

Brick oven pizza from the comfort of your home

My favorite pizza place in the world claims the secret to those amazing pies is its brick oven. I've made pizza at home time and again, and I think they're right. You just don't get that perfectly baked crust out of the standard oven. A pizza stone helps, but for the serious pizza fan, a personal brick oven might be a better option.

Cuisinart has a countertop oven perfect for stone-baked pizza and bread. It's called the Brick Oven Deluxe. The oven is actually built around genuine bricks surrounding 0.9 cubic feet of baking space, … Read more

What's for dinner? Ask the oven

Every Sunday, before I go grocery shopping, I gather my family around the table and ask, "What do you want for dinner this week?" And every Sunday, right after I ask, everyone is suddenly extremely busy counting the tiles in the kitchen backsplash. Which is why I often find myself staring at that same backsplash come 5 p.m., wondering what the heck to feed my brood tonight.

If only my oven could tell me what to make!

That's what one of the latest kitchen offerings from LG attempts to do. The new single and double built-in … Read more

Siemen's iSlide oven has an iPod-like clickwheel for temperature-setting

I spotted this Siemens avantGarde iSlide wall oven on Kitchens.com and was immediately drawn to the iPod-like clickwheel it uses for controlling the oven's temperature.

It's certainly cool and seems easy to use, but I'm not sure how stable the touch wheel will be after you slide your finger on it a thousand times. (After a year or so, my iPod Nano's wheel became quite quirky and I might find that annoying in an oven--sending me right back to the basic Magic Chef knob.)

Wheels aside, this oven has drawn a lot of attention for … Read more

Top chef for tots

Although it isn't technically an appliance or a kitchen gadget, I felt that it was incumbent upon me to sound off about the MagiCook Kitchen by Little Tikes, a toy set that comes with several food look-a-likes that are embedded with RFID tags.

Radio-frequency identification is a way for an electronic receiver to identify items with radio waves. This means that the toy can sense when Junior pops something into the oven, and will respond with phrases in up to three languages that are appropriate to the meal of the moment.

Why is this kind of thing important? Well, … Read more

No dessert until you finish all of your bugs

A friend of mine has cockroaches in his house as pets. As confusing as his choice of pet might be to all of his friends, he just might be on to something. Cultivating microlivestock might just be the next big food movement.

Westerners have traditionally been squeamish about eating creepy crawlies, but perhaps it is time that has changed. The rest of the world has long since recognized and appreciated bugs for the protein source they are. Turns out, once-pesky critters can be considered a good source of vitamins and minerals too.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization sites more … Read more

EatSmart does the calculating for you

I have a pan of brownies sitting on my counter. I keep an eye on what I eat, but that doesn't mean that I can't eat a sweet or two. The problem that I run into is that it's hard to decide just how much brownie I can have. I've looked around, but I haven't found any helpful information. One recipe suggested that 1/20 of a pan is the appropriate serving size for a brownie. However, I'm not going to spend my time dividing a pan that precisely.

The EatSmart Nutrition Scale provides … Read more

LG microwave is big on function

I have four small kids, so when we plan a large dinner with friends, I do as much cooking as possible ahead of time. But I also live in Houston, so running the oven at 170 degrees to keep the food warm until we sit down to eat doesn't exactly thrill me. I've tried microwaving cooked food, but it delays the start of the meal, because each item has to be placed inside and heated. When I cram in several dishes at once, the turntable sputters, and I end up with spills all over everything.

LG's new … Read more

Saving the planet, one countertop at a time

Like it or not, our lives depend on energy. Lots of it. In fact, the United States alone consumes more than 3.35 terawatts per year, enough energy to run that computer you're reading this from for about 35 billion years, give or take a few million.

In an effort to decrease our environmental imprint and be smarter about how efficiently we're using our energy, several companies have introduced "green" models of their products. Though the Green movement started as a few political conservationist groups in the early 1980s, it is now responsible for one of … Read more