Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

A keg cooler for survivalists

If some

Its "MyFridge" line includes a

The best part, if it works as advertised, is that the cooler will function anywhere at any time, without the need for any CO2 cartridges. Can you say Burning Man?

AOL, Campbell partner on online recipes

AOL and the Campbell Soup Company have teamed up to make the food section of AOL's Web site a little more enticing. A new section, launched today, is called "Dinner Tonight" and features a quick and easy recipe for each night of the week. Users can tab through to see the suggested recipes for the whole week. AOL will include more than 2,000 Campbell's recipes in that section. But don't assume it's all going to be chicken baked in a can of cream of mushroom soup. Recipes for this week also come from AllRecipes.com more

An espresso maker you might actually use

Let's have a show of hands of all the people who have an espresso maker (probably from their wedding registry) that's still sitting in its box or is stowed away in some unreachable cupboard. Machines that make espresso drinks are one of those kitchen gadgets that seem like a great idea but never seem to get used.

This is probably due to a variety of reasons: they're complicated to use; the espresso's cool by the time the milk is hot; or they just don't make good espresso.

But here's one I dare say I more

Diamond-studded pan redefines haute cuisine

Here's one for the wedding registry: a gold-and-diamond-studded pot that carries a price tag just north of $200,000. The 11-inch saucepan from cookware manufacturer Fissler features almost 2.2 pounds of solid gold in its lid and side handles and logo. But what's gold without diamonds? The saucepan features 200 of them, in various sizes. It also comes packaged in a jewelry box made of root wood and accompanied by the appropriate quality certificate.

The costly cookware is not exactly being mass-produced: Each saucepan is handmade to order in Germany and available only to "the exclusive clientele more

The wine cooler from outer space

Our appreciation of notwithstanding, we're not so sure about the need for tabletop digital coolers.

The "

Waeco's "

For $143, the least they could have done was included an

Pumpkin Gutter makes evisceration easy

Making a , a $12 drill attachment that lets you zip through the sticky pumpkin prep stage and get right to carving. All you have to do is cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin, use the dishwasher-safe Pumpkin Gutter to loosen the strings and thin out the walls, and then dump the guts out. The tool even leaves the seeds intact for those who like to turn them into snacks.

We're always wary of seasonal gadgets, which often turn out to be a waste of money. But according to , the total time from raw pumpkin to simple more

Water pitcher goes from empty to full in 38 seconds flat

Is there anything more annoying than walking into the kitchen to refill your water glass, only to find that your roommate/child/spouse/co-habitation partner has left the pitcher completely empty? Well, actually that car alarm beeping outside is pretty annoying. And so are all those Colorado Rockies insta-fans. But you get the picture. Whenever you innocently stumble upon an empty water pitcher, before you can get that cool, refreshing goodness you have to fill up the pitcher and wait f-o-r-e-v-e-r while you watch it drip...
drip...
drip...

TasteBook kicks homemade recipe books up a notch

Kristina Nielsen has a growing collection of recipes, culled from friends, family members, magazines, books, Web sites and the occasional food package label. She keeps some of them in a binder and some loosely shoved in a drawer; some are neatly printed, some hastily scribbled on notes. Others live online in her recipe boxes on various sites. Together they represent the culmination of the 10 years she's spent learning how to cook new dishes. Now, a company called TasteBook wants to take Kristina's recipe collection--and those of amateur chefs like her--into the 21st century.

TasteBook, which plans to launch Tuesday, hopes to create an easy way for people to find recipes and print out their own customized, hardcover cookbooks. A number of self-service publishing services like Blurb, Lulu and Xlibris already allow people to upload their own pictures and text and publish a hardcover book. TasteBook takes the basic idea of those services and caters the process specifically to making recipe books.

TasteBook has two key features: first, it simplifies searching for recipes online by indexing recipes from all over the Web into one list of search results. It then allows people to select recipes from those search results and print them out in a professional-looking cookbook.

At launch, the TasteBook site will include about 25,000 recipes from Epicurious, but the company plans to expand its service to include recipes from other sites beginning next year. People can automatically important their Epicurious recipe boxes and can also upload their own recipes and include them in the books they print.

For $34.95, a user can print a hardcover binder with handpicked cover art and up to 100 recipes with their own comments added. If all 100 recipes aren't used initially, TasteBook will issue credits for the remaining recipes, which can be printed out later and added to the binder or sent to friends.

To avoid copyright issues with the sites that publish recipes, TasteBook licenses recipes from their original publishers when they are printed out. And on TasteBook.com, users can see only previews of recipes. To view a recipe in its entirety, they have to click through to the original recipe site. In this way, TasteBook hopes to drive traffic back to those sites and focus more on recipe discovery and printing rather than getting into the business of creating recipes themselves.

Company co-founder Kamran Mohsenin likens the online interface to that of another bit of well-known software. "We're basically doing the iTunes model," Mohsenin said. "If you know how to use iTunes, you know how to use TasteBook." In addition to acting as an intermediary between consumers and content publishers, TasteBook has a service similar to iTunes Essentials, which are pre-compiled playlists users can browse and use to discover new artists and songs. TasteBook currently has about a dozen featured collections, such as kid-friendly or vegetarian recipes, that users can browse to get ideas.

TasteBook is launching simply, but the company has plans to expand in the coming year by forming new partnerships with other recipe sites, adding more featured recipe collections with various themes and authors and by supporting user-generated photos. They'll also be "turning up the social factor because (cooking is) a very social thing," Mohsenin said. But out of the gate, they're not attempting to become another social networking site.

The company was founded by two former employees of Ofoto (now Kodak Gallery)--Ofoto co-founder Mohsenin and former Chief Technical Architect Greg Schroeder. Don't be surprised to see them delve into other niches eventually. It's the dedication to a specific hobby that sets TasteBook apart from other types of publishing services that don't get involved in the content itself, Mohsenin said.

"We're creating a new category (of publishing), called the custom book. The idea is that we actually understand what 1 cup of milk means. So we can go to

Update on October 24, 2007: TasteBook announced Tuesday night that it has received funding from CondeNet, publisher of Epicurious.com.

In Japan, signs are smelled as well as seen

After the introduction of

NTT Communications is doing just that in Tokyo, where it's been experimenting with "its latest aroma-emitting digital sign technology, called '

One interesting technical aspect of the displays is its control via the Web; instructions for particular types of fragrances and their concentration levels can be dictated remotely to cover as much as 5,400 square feet. Which makes us think that NTT had better invest in some security, because the last thing they'd want would be a hacker messing around with this stuff.

Gomobo uses Twitter for new 'food buddy' feature

As a result, when you order pick-up food from Gomobo, it'll automatically send a message to your Twitter feed with the restaurant name, the pickup time, and an invitation to let fellow Twitterers connect with you and meet you at the location in question.

You can think about it one of two ways. One, if you're lonely and emo and want a food buddy, this is a way to broadcast it to your whole Twitter friends and encourage them to join you. (Gomobo founder and CEO Noah Glass assured me that you can turn it off in the more