kitchenmage

Wordless Wednesday: Hardwood Floor 1, Knife 0

My favorite paring knife. tiny sob

Noisy Jelly: Magical Musical Game

This thing looks like pure fun!

A couple of technomages in Europe have conjured up Noisy Jelly, this odd-looking device consisting of a box with electronic bits and gelled cones of agar-agar/salt solution. They describe it like this:

With this noisy chemistry lab, the gamer will create his own jelly with water and a few grams of agar agar powder. After added different color, the mix is then pour in the molds. 10 min later, the jelly shape can then be placed on the game board, and by touching the shape, the gamer will activate different sounds.

Technically, the game board is a capacitive sensor, and the variations of the shape and their salt concentration, the distance and the strength of the finger contact are detected and transform into an audio signal.

This object aims to demonstrate that electronic can have a new aesthetic, and be envisaged as a malleable material, which has to be manipulated and experimented.

Note : This project is a fully working prototype made with Arduino and Max/Msp, there are absolut no sound editing in the video...

Noisy Jelly press kit (from which I also extracted the photo)

I can see many of you nodding along with blank looks on your faces (me too at first) but here it is in action.

NOISY JELLY from Raphaël Pluvinage on Vimeo.

Is that the coolest thing you have seen lately?

From what I can see this is not likely to hit the store shelves any time soon but it is a fascinating and fun convergence of food and tech.

Creators:

Raphaël Pluvinage
Marianne Cauvard

More information:

Noisy Jelly press kit
Noisy Jelly flickr set 

By the way, this bit of wonder came my way via the Very Short List newsletter which delivers a blessedly brief bit of "cultural gems from a different curator every day." I only signed up recently and find it more interesting than not, which is saying something these days.

Cuisinart Sightings!

The saga of the missing cuisinart goes on, with fresh sightings and more strange messages. Today brings two frightening images, each with its own brief note.

The first of these showed up early today.

1.28.11

So disoriented...not sure where I am but the people - if that's what they truly are - are scary. Wait! Don't put me there...I'll behave!

The accompanying photo, as well as another (more dire) delivery later in the day, after the jump.

Have You Seen This Cuisinart?

update here: Cuisinart Sightings

A small piece of plastic flew off my food processor as I made oat flour one January night leaving me with half-ground oats and plastic shards as well as a huge hole in my necessary kitchen appliances. I would rant about that more but my trusty Cuisinart was a quarter of a century old and that's a darned good investment in basic kitchen gear.

During those 25 years, my Cuis' went from labor-saving device to necessity after repetitive stress injuries and a horribly broken arm. A dead food processor called for a replacement; no questions asked.

After a wee bit of research, it was obvious that, if I wanted my investment in blades to be useful, I had but one choice. Like a good denizen of the web, I one-clicked my way to a shiny new toy, no questions asked.

Well, one question must now be asked...

Wordless Wednesday: Aprons That Make Me Smile

 

This apron remind me of my grandmother, Mimi, who favored aprons with a bit of panache, her own mix of cheek and frills. As a child, this meant fun dressup worthy aprons when I went to her house to cook, which I did quite often, She would also have loved this black hostess number. Because, seriously, black hostess aprons . How Mad Men is that?

Check out all of tarazara's Vintage Inspired Aprons on etsy.

Dear FTC: re: blogger disclosure  ~  Tara is a friend of mine, but nothing of value has changed hands in relationship to this post. She has, however, given me many things of value over the years: advice, well-placed humor, support, an occasional virtual smack upside the head, and mostly friendship...but since it has pretty much all taken place online, I assume the NSA already knows all about that.

Holiday Gift Deal of the Day: Shun Ken Onion Knife Set

Tis the season to covet shiny things, and these knives are at the top of my current list of tools to drool over. I used a Shun knife once and it was oh so sweet: well balanced, comfortable, sharper than sharp, and that blade is so darned pretty to look at. Then I went home to my haphazard collection of cheap knives, with that sweet Shun but a fond memory.

If you have longed for some Shun knives of your very own, this may be your lucky day. Amazon has a set of three Shun Ken Onion 3-Piece Knife Set on sale for only 199 (instead of almost 600 bucks.)

Dear FTC: Yes, that is an affiliate link and, if people click on it and shop at Amazon, I may make a few nickels. If I make enough nickels, I might buy myself some of those Shun knives. I am not holding my breath.

edited to add: someoneElse looked at my computer and commented on the lovely Shun knives. Asked what was so cool about them. I babbled something marketing-like and reminisced about how lovely the Shun I played with felt in my hand. Those lovely Shun knives are now making their way from Amazon's warehouse to my house. Simply. Lovely.

(This is clearly the sort of reinforcement I need to get back to serious blogging, although someoneElse is going to have to get a second job to support my coveting...)

Now, go, shop. Don't forget to buy yourself something nice, too.

Mage's got a Brand New Blog

with apologies to James Brown

One of my long-term goals is a reorganization of my multiple blog disorder syndrome (MBBDS), a malady which I am guessing will be in DSM VIII. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Hi! I'm kitchenMage and I am a blogaholic....

Ah! I feel so much better.

The next step is creating a new blog: kitchenMage's Reviews so all of my opinions about things you can buy have a home. My first review, of a lovely shopping spree courtesy of BlogHer and JCPenney's is posted. Wander over and see how I spent $300 without taking off my fuzzy slippers.

Start your day with...bacon!

This may be the answer for people who, like me, hate mornings but adore bacon. The Wake n' Bacon is an alarm clock that wakes some lucky person with a waft of freshly frying bacon. A cute little wooden pig hides a small cooking chamber where a slice of bacon is cooked just in time to wake you up with a hungry smile on your face.

The only downside that I see is that you have to load the bacon before you go to sleep so it spends the night sitting there being a laboratory for bad bugs to grow in - meaning you probably don't want to eat it. Well, you probably want to, but you shouldn't.

Tools: Seasonal Produce Map

Epicurious has a sweet little applet that you just might find useful: an interactive Peak Season Map. It's simple to use, just select a state and a month to display a list of produce that is likely to be available at farmer's markets. (I'm going to check when I go to the market this weekend and see how the list matches up to reality. It says there should still be rhubarb and I haven't seen any in weeks. Then again, maybe it is still growing on the other side of the mountains.)

Each type of produce has links to a description of the ingredient and recipes, some also have preparation and shopping tips. It looks like it could be a handy thing to have bookmarked, particularly when planning for the future or sharing recipes with friends in other places, or to reassure yourself that berry season starts next month and that's really not so long to wait.

Plastic knife pot roast (with recipe)

Tonight I bring you the tale of the plastic knife and the pot roast, in which we will attempt to answer the question: Will the little red plastic knife be able to cut up vegetables for a pot roast or will it have to call on the reinforcement knife lurking in the background?

The bright red beauty is a Zyliss salad knife - theory being that if you cut your salad with plastic/nylon instead of metal the lettuce won't oxidize and turn icky brown. I tear lettuce for salad by hand so that purpose was of little interest to me, but I have been looking for kid-safe tools and wondered if it would work to cut veggies but not fingers. 

Setting my expectations at some reasonable level, I decided that I would try something soft to start with. Handing the knife and a tomato to someoneElse, I watched, ready to admit defeat when the knife mangled the tomato.

Except it didn't.