My crazy splat stan coaster

Few coasters will go so far to protect your table tops as the Splat Stan Coaster. Nicknamed the kamikaze coaster, Splat Stan has caught so many coffee cups that he's now flat. He'll do whatever it takes to protect your desk or table from drink stains. The coaster was designed by Suck UK, a gift and accessory design company specializing in unusual items. Suck UK took the typical, plain coaster and turned it into a conversation starter. While most coasters are designed to blend into the background, the Splat Stan Coaster makes a point of being visible.
The Splat Stan Coaster is made from silicone rubber, more than capable of keeping moisture away from table tops. The bright orange color is just an added bonus--I'm not sure how well it will match your decor, but at least it will always be easy to find. It is approximately 5 inches by 4.5 inches--while it's sized for a coffee mug, the Splat Stan Coaster works equally well as most other beverage holders. Unfortunately, it's not such a great coaster for square, or otherwise oddly shaped, glasses.
You can purchase the Splat Stan Coaster for $11.99. It doesn't appear that the Splat Stan Coaster is available in the standard set of four that most coasters come in, unfortunately.

DIY butter at home

Making even staple food items has become more popular lately: many people are concerned about where their food is coming from, and they want as much control over it as they can. Among the many items you can make at home with a little extra effort is butter--it's actually one of the easiest staple foods to make at home, provided you have the right equipment. The right equipment is the Paderno World Cuisine Butter Maker. Making butter with a butter maker is just a matter of pouring in cream--available at any supermarket--and turning the crank until the cream stiffens.
In the case of the Paderno World Cuisine Butter Maker, the crank is turned by hand. It may sound like a little more work than you're used to, but it can be well worth the effort and you don't need to find a power outlet in order to plug in a hand-cranked butter maker. While you can purchase automatic butter makers, there is a discernible taste difference between the two--though the differences between fresh butter and store bought is huge. Fresh butter has more flavor than any butter purchased at the store. Paderno's butter maker is priced at approximately $80.

Keep your fruits fresh

I hate wasting food. Therefore, I shop for groceries with the week ahead in mind. I plan recipes in my head as I stroll through the stands of the farmers market. Some items can wait until the next trip, while some I know will be eaten right away. Unfortunately, this means my shopping is not a precise science. While it is rare for me to let food go bad, sometimes it does happen.
The Automatic Vacuum Sealing Food Preserver from Hammacher Schlemmer can help keep fruits and vegetables fresh a longer time. Measuring 10 inches tall by 19 inches wide by 9 inches deep, the large capacity is ideal for storing a variety of produce. Upon closing the lid, a vacuum is created at 16mbar of pressure, which is "the optimal pressure for preserving foodstuffs." The unit plugs into an AC outlet or uses 4 D-cell batteries.
Vacuum sealing technology is no mystery. Storing perishables in an airtight environment keeps microorganisms and decay at bay. Keeping fruits and vegetables fresh longer would ensure that less food goes to waste. Provided, of course, that shopping habits don't change. Just because there is a vacuum sealer in the house, doesn't mean I would have to fill it up with foods I know I might not get around to eating. That durian fruit won't last forever, you know.

A smart oven

When it comes to baking, you're limited to what your oven can handle. If you want to bake more than one thing, you often have to wait to get your baking done. But the Breville Stainless Steel Smart Oven provides the ability to bake in a small space--even while you've got your oven going. The Smart Oven cooks food perfectly with 1,800 watts of power, more than enough to handle even the high temperature needed to turn out a great pizza.
The Breville Stainless Steel Smart Oven can easily be preset: included in its controls are nine customizable presets, as well as a digital display. The Smart Oven is 18-1/2 inches by 12-1/2 inches by 10-3/4 inches, fitting easily on your countertop.
It comes with a 13-inch pizza pan and a 12-inch square baking tray, so you don't have to worry about buying smaller pans that will fit the Smart Oven. It has a retractable crumb tray for easy cleanup and the rack even auto-ejects halfway when you open the oven door, making it easy for you to remove your hot items. The Smart Oven does make cooking much simpler. The Breville Stainless Steel Smart Oven is priced at $249.95.

Countertop Convection Oven

If you've been wanting to add a convection oven to your kitchen but don't have a lot of space, a convection oven built to sit on your countertop may be the answer. The Hamilton Beach Countertop Convection Oven fits nicely on most counters: it's 12.5 inches by 17.5 inches by 13.66 inches. You might assume with that small of an exterior a convection oven wouldn't have much cooking space, but the Hamilton Beach Countertop Convection Oven has a 1.1 cubic foot interior--that's enough room to cook a five-pound chicken or even two 12-inch pizzas.
The Hamilton Beach Countertop Convection Oven comes with two oven racks, two backing pans, a broil rack, a crumb tray, and a rotisserie skewer and lifter. With this convection oven, you can easily rotisserie chickens and other meat at home and you can keep a close eye on the process through the large window. Hamilton Beach also makes a countertop convection oven available without the rotisserie function. Many of the parts are dishwasher-safe, making clean up a breeze for this countertop convection oven. Its controls are easy to use, with a timer, an adjustable temperature, and other standard features. The Hamilton Beach Countertop Convection Oven is priced at approximately $150.

HRB 1110 refrigerator

With its new line of fully integrated refrigerators, Liebherr is offering state of the art appliances: among other innovations available in the HRB 1110 and other refrigerators in the line is Leibherr's patented climate system. The Biofresh system controls temperature and humidity, helping food to remain fresh up to three times longer than normal refrigerators.
According to Leibherr, it has also worked hard to make sure that its integrated refrigerator line scores high Energy Star ratings and, in fact, the company's entire refrigeration product line exceeds the new guidelines for Energy Star. Leibherr is also the refrigeration manufacturer to bring its products into full RoHS compliance worldwide. The RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment) guidelines guarantee that Leibherr uses materials with minimal environmental impact, as well as reducing the hazardous materials that might wind up in your home.
Integrated refrigerators from Leibherr, such as the HRB 1110, have a capacity of 7.1 cubic feet. The accompanying NoFrost Freezer has an additional 2.1 cubic feet of capacity. They are meant to be built into a kitchen wall but do have a variety of attractive doors available.

Deep fryer, throw your frying pan.

Both of my husband's parents were born in Morocco. Consequently, my husband grew up eating a lot of traditional Moroccan foods, most of which involve oil. And deep frying.
As it turns out, if you do use a deep fryer and oil heated to the proper temperature, the food you cook actually absorbs less oil than if you used a pot of oil on the stove. What's more, a deep fryer is far less likely to spatter oil all over your kitchen (or worse, your face) than that giant pot.
But a deep fryer does have a few drawbacks. Namely, you fill it with oil, and it can get sticky and disgusting fairly quickly. So, in my mind, one of the most critical features in a deep fryer is that it comes apart easily and that as much of it as possible be dishwasher safe.
The Hamilton Beach 35020 Cool Touch Deep Fryer seems to fit the bill. The interior pot can be lifted out easily when cool, and it's easy to dump the contents and stick it in the dishwasher. Even better, the lid of the machine is detachable and cleans up easily. This is a huge benefit--if you've never owned a deep fryer you can't possibly understand how gross the lids get. Even the filter pops out and could probably be washed in the top rack of your dishwasher, although hot soapy water does the trick quite nicely.
If you want French fries, eggrolls, battered fried chicken, and other delicious foods that may not be the healthiest choices but that taste really good, check out this fryer. Bon appetit!

DIY jerky

We're big fans of beef jerky at our house. We make up a batch every couple of weeks and use it for snacks. But it's not always the cleanest project, and I worry a little bit about where pieces of raw meat might land. The Jumbo Jerky Works Gun offers a more controlled approach to jerky making: rather than needing to chop up tons of meat for jerky, you can use ground beef--or turkey for a leaner alternative. You mix in jerky spices and put your ground beef into the tube of the jerky gun. You can then just squeeze the trigger of the Jumbo Jerky Works Gun to make jerky sticks quickly. All that's left is dehydrating the jerky as normal. The Jumbo Jerky Works Gun is even dishwasher safe, making the whole process go quickly.

The Jumbo Jerky Works Gun is jumbo for a simple reason: you can fit an entire pound of ground beef in the gun at once. I've found that 1-pound batches are pretty ideal for having jerky on hand when I want it. The gun comes with spices, as well as three attachments for making jerky strips, sticks, and double strips. It's priced at $19.9

I love cocktail

Even if margaritas aren't your favorite frozen drink, the Margaritaville Tahiti Frozen Concoction Maker can come in handy: it comes preprogrammed for margaritas, mudslides, daiquiris, smoothies, coladas and mojitos. It's up to you whether any of those drinks are alcoholic, as well--if all you're interested in is a fruit smoothie, the Tahiti can provide. It can even mix three different drinks at once, making for easy party management. To use the Margaritaville Tahiti Frozen Concoction Maker, you fill the extra-large hopper with ice, add beverage ingredients to the individual jars, and press the button that matches your preferred style of drink or use the manual controls. In just moments, you'll have a drink with a perfect consistency--no ice chunks, no drinks watered down due to melting ice. The Tahiti is able to keep melted ice from reaching your drink in the first place: it diverts melted ice to a reservoir. Each jar holds 24 ounces, allowing you to easily split drinks between friends. The Tahiti comes with three jars. This drink machine is made from aluminum, stainless steel, bamboo wood and ABS plastic and measures 14.25 inches by 18 inches by 20 inches.

Digital life, digital kitchen

If you're a baker, you know that precise measurements mean everything. So much so, that expert bakers tell us ways to spoon flour into measuring cups in order to avoid compacting the flour and using too much. For smaller measurements, using methods like this are much more difficult, if not impossible.

Using standard measuring spoons can result in too much or too little ingredients (like too much yeast or too little baking soda), completely changing the consistency of the finished product. This precision spoon scale by Admetior alleviates this problem by having a digital weight measurement built right into the handle.
Measuring up to 2.9 ounces, the spoon takes care of most of the smaller ingredients in baking recipes, and if used multiple times, can measure larger quantities too. It has two clear interchangeable spoon bowls with printed measurements, It also saves space, fitting into your utensil crock or drawer instead of requiring a space on the shelf.