Tag: kitchen

Categories
Connected Objects Home

GeniCan smart garbage builds your shopping list, engages in trash talk

As noted in classic Sunny Delight commercials and ads for the Keurig 2.0 brewer, we must always be prepared for the possibility that a random mob might barge into our homes demanding something to eat or drink. That’s not the time to find out a shopping trip is called for. As a result, a number of products have sought to save us from prolonging consumption interruption by reminding us to reorder or automatically doing so.

While some of these products focus on goods while they’re in the process of depleting, GeniCan steps in at the end of their lifecycle. A barcode scanner that clips onto a kitchen garbage can or recycling bin, GeniCan adds disposed items back into a shopping list under the assumption the owner would like to order that item again. For products without a barcode, the GeniCan incorporates voice recognition for less automated list building.

Continue reading “GeniCan smart garbage builds your shopping list, engages in trash talk”
Categories
Connected Objects Cooking

Babs connected kitchen assistant helps keep both your gadgets and grub clean

A kitchen is only pristine when it isn’t being used to whip up a delicious breakfast, lunch, or dinner. When food preparation is on the agenda, kitchens can get real messy real quick, making it onerous to both cook and simultaenously reference resources like cookbooks and internet recipes.

Salted Wire’s Babs smart kitchen assistant is here to help out in that regard. The Bags smart kitchen is exactly what people need to prevent their recipe books from getting soaked with water and their iPad screens from becoming grease-laden cesspools. Bats utilizes voice controls, thereby allowing users to ask Babs for anything as varied as dinner ideas tailored to specific dietary needs to suggestions on making a current recipe better. To make up for its lack of a display, the device is capable of interfacing with Chromecast, Android devices, and iOS devices. As a result, users can send whatever information they’d like to smartphones, tablets, and TVs to truly provide for a hands-off experience.

Continue reading “Babs connected kitchen assistant helps keep both your gadgets and grub clean”
Categories
Cooking

Fourneau Bread Oven cooks bread at home, saves dough at bakery

Despite the current war on bread, most people eat bread every single day. Unfortunately, this gluten-infested treat is slightly complicated to make. Those with bread makers may take the plunge, but everyone else usually opts to visit the bakery instead.

Now, the Fourneau Bread Oven lets timid bread-lovers make their own. This little metal hatch goes straight into the oven. When preheating is done, stick the loaf into Fourneau and close the door. The Fourneau Bread Oven provides the type of tight steamy space the loaf needs to bake without any hassle. The folks at Fourneau also offer a peel (otherwise known as that giant wooden spatula bakers use) and a book of bread recipes.

There are plenty of DIY methods out there to designed to cook bread at home without a bread machine, but they’re all fairly makeshift. Fourneau is a good option for those looking for an easier alternative. The device appears to only cook baguette-type bread, which may limit its appeal going forward. Still, backers who would like one can donate $195 for delivery in August 2015. Fourneau is hoping to raise $90,000 on Kickstarter by April 7.

Categories
Connected Objects Food and Beverage

Neo Smart Jar puts a lid on foods, whips up recipes for whatever’s around

If the crowdfunding world has taught us anything, it’s that everything deserves Bluetooth. The Neo Smart Jar demonstrates how even an everyday object can be completely transformed with Bluetooth connectivity.

Pantries everywhere are filled with foods and ingredients whose quantity and freshness are easily and quickly forgotten. The Neo Smart Jar steps in to help by using Bluetooth to communicate pertinent food information to a companion iOS or Android app. The Neo Smart Jar not only keeps track of food quantity and nutrition in real time, but it can also sync that information with paired fitness devices. Additionally the Neo Smart Jar can send out freshness alerts and create consumption trends of foods and ingredients over time.

What’s more, Neo can even make cooking easier: the app suggests recipes based on what’s available, and adjusts both the quantities needed and portion size depending on the number of guests at the table. Lastly ,the jar’s companion app can dynamically update shopping lists, even going so far as to automatically place orders for required items via Amazon (additional partner stores are in the works).

Each jar charges wirelessly and can runs for several months off a single charge, thus making the Neo Smart Jar a truly modern update to the humble glass jar of yore. A single Neo goes for $54, two can be had for $99, and a set of six can be picked up for $299. The $50,000 campaign is looking to ship the connected piece of kitchenware by November 2015.

Given the sheer variety of available helpful crowdfunded products for the kitchen, including the Pantelligent, ChefBot and the CookStarta, it seems like the cooking process itself may now be the hardest part of the cooking equation. While other products may tack on Bluetooth as an afterthought, the Neo Smart Jar implements it intelligently, and it shows.

Categories
Kids/Babies Nutrition/Hydration

Jungle Bowl helps you tame picky eaters

Some kids can be really picky eaters. Some will eat anything they happen to find sitting around, whether it’s a food item or not. But for the parents of picky eaters, life can be a challenge, especially when it comes to trying to get kids to try new foods that are actually healthy. Jungle Bowl is offering a concept that seems to be borrowed from the “Happy Meal” idea.

If little Johnny or Suzie eats their food—as opposed to dumping it out, throwing it on the floor, or feeding it to Fido—then they get a toy. The toy shows up in a window at the bottom of the bowl. When enough food has been eaten so that the toy is visible, the parent can open the two part gadget and let the child have the toy. The product is touted as being designed in such a way that a child would not be able to open it without the help of a parent. It seems like an interesting idea worth checking into.

This campaign seeks to raise $40,000 by March 18. Early bird backers get one product for $23 with an expected delivery of September of this year.

Categories
Cooking

Bakebare lets you handle what’s hot as though it’s not

It seems like the oven mitt always finds a place to hide when it comes time to pull that delectable dish or desert out of the oven. Bakebare offers a whole new line of baking dishes and pans that can be handled without an oven mitt—straight out of the oven.

Cookies, cakes and other delights get placed on the cookie sheet or in the baking pan as usual, and then when they are finished baking, there is a designated area that remains cool to touch. The reason the designated area is touted as being able to stay cool, in a nutshell, is due to the use of a natural honeycomb porous geometry feature and thermal protective coating that work together to dissipate the heat. This keeps the designated area at roughly 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Seems like an interesting product worth checking into further.

This campaign seeks to raise $60,000 by March 10. Early bird backers get one product for $29 with an expected delivery in July of this year.

Categories
Food and Beverage

Snackadium: build it on your dining room table, and they will come

There’s something about having a house full of people who love football, food and fun that makes watching a game on that big screen TV the perfect day. Especially when the food is arranged on the table to look like a Snackadium. It adds a perfect pizzazz to the party atmosphere when the snacks are arranged in the shape of a stadium.

The unique food storage container comes with eleven pieces that make up the field, grandstands, and end zone. It’s touted as being customizable, easy to assemble, clean, and microwavable, but it’s not clearly stated if it’s safe for dishwashers. Even so, it might actually be worth the inconvenience of washing this item by hand just because of how clever it looks and the ooohs and aaahs it will inspire from guests. Super Bowl-loving backers might also like to check out the Bottleloft, the Kickoff Kaddy, the GrillOven, and the Rotissa-Fry.

This campaign seeks to raise $250,000 by March 8. Backers can get one product for $100, with an expected delivery in August of this year.

Categories
Kids/Babies

Phillup color-coded kids cups cut down on waste

It’s amazing how a cup collection seems to grow in each child’s room like a massive weed, and how that seems to sprawl into many others rooms in the house. Phillup was created to help control the outrageous number of cups that get used by kids on a daily basis and cut down on the frequency of washing them.

The hangable kid cup consists of a cup with a loop that can be hung on a matching hook. The cups come in several colors, so they can be color-coded and each child assigned a color. Then they can just reuse their cup throughout the day when drinking water. The cups are also BPA-free and dishwasher safe.

This does seem to offer a solution to a pretty common problem, though there is also the option of just buying plastic cups and writing each child’s name on it with a permanent marker. Backers with little ones might also like to check out WetHeads and Puggle. This campaign seeks to raise $30,000 on Kickstarter. Backers get one product for $8, with an expected delivery of May 2015.

Categories
Cooking

Find-A-Scoop seeks missing powder measuring mechanisms

Powdered products can be a great help in the kitchen when cooking, or for those who enjoy their protein and fruit drinks. But digging out a scoop that has sunk to the bottom of a canister makes for an inconvenient mess that can cause some waste.

So Find-A-Scoop was designed to put a stop to having to dig around both small and large containers. The BPA-free, dishwasher safe product has three features: a no-slip finger grip, a slatted power-draining dipper, and an extended reach handle. The mini scoop is ¼” deep, and the full size scoop is 1″ deep.

The product seems like it would be easy enough to use, but a slatted cooking spoon might do the job just as well. Backers interested in healthy-lifestyle items might also like to check out Made, Armadillo Colander,  Go-Shake, Fab, and Rotissa-Fry. This campaign seeks to raise $35,000 by February 11, 2015. For $10, backers get one full and mini size scoop with an expected delivery of October 2015.

Categories
Cooking

Rotissa-Fry cooks, bakes, fries, roasts your dinner on the fly

The hurried pace of life often makes cooking meals that are tasty but still healthy a challenge. So the more multitasking a kitchen cooking gadget can do, the more attractive it often looks to those who want to have good food fast.

Rotissa-Fry offers a variety of cooking options all in one device.  The small but effective energy-efficient cooker uses 360°F heating to make certain that things are cooked evenly and in half the time of other options such as an oven, grill or fryer. Since it doesn’t require any oil and is made of non-stick material, foods are lower in fat. Some of its capabilities include frying bacon and eggs, baking breads and cakes, steaming fish and veggies, grilling sandwiches and burgers, cooking stir fry, roasting chicken, beef, pork and lamb, rotisserie cooking and defrosting. Since Rotissa-Fry is portable, food can be cooked anywhere that there is a power source to plug it into.

Certainly anyone who enjoys entertaining, is a cooking enthusiast, or sees cooking as a hobby will enjoy this product. There doesn’t appear to be any assembly necessary, nor any special tools for switching it from one type of cooking to another, although that is not clearly indicated. Other fun kitchen gadgets in which backers may have an interest include GrillOven and MasterPan, and those looking for a way to cut fat and still have some flavor may like to check out Fab. This campaign seeks to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter. For $150, backers get one product with an expected delivery of April 2015.