Cooking For Engineers®

Recently, I received a wireless thermometer from Thermoworks to try out. Their newest product is called Smoke and is specifically designed to help people barbecue and smoke food at home. Smoke has two parts - a base unit (which takes two of Thermoworks standardized Pro-Series probes) and a wireless receiver unit - which lets the user track the air temperature and the food temperature without going outside to the smoker.
Thermoworks is selling the Smoke at $99 and this would definitely welcome tool for anyone who likes to slow cook food outside.

These days when I reach for a spatula to turn food in a pan, I've been finding myself grabbing the GastroMax Slotted Turner more often than not. Tina bought this spatula for me after months (or maybe years) of listening to me complain about our various spatulas. After buying the GastroMax Turner, my complaining has stopped.

This is no big secret: I like food. I like to eat food, look at food, read about food, prepare food, and think about food. But, even more than food, I like beverages. More specifically - I love sweet, flavored beverages like juices, teas & tisanes, sodas, and other soft drinks. Three years ago, I published a recipe for limeade and a U.K. reader suggested using SodaStream to make it bubbly. I finally got around to trying out a SodaStream (called a Soda-Club Home Soda Maker in the United States), and it is awesome! I use the Soda-Club machine at least once a week and always keep a bottle of freshly carbonated water available at all times.

In 2005, a family owned business headed by inventor Larry Mackiewicz started to sell a tabletop cooling device called the CoolCover. The problem it solved was straightforward: how do you serve foods that should be chilled? The traditional answer to that problem is often unattractive and messy. Fill a large tub with crushed ice and place the chilled food in the ice. For foods that need to be kept below 40°F, the ice method is still the best around, but for foods that only need to be served chilled or kept lower than the ambient temperature, the CoolCover is certainly one of the better solutions.