By Genevieve Sibayan

I don't want to play into the hands of gender stereotypes but an item that caught my eye recently was a kitchen gadget. Maybe I'm subconsciously craving cake and baked goods but the combination of kitchen paraphernalia and space economy really appeals. My current set of scales is a chunky analogue thing; which sits there in the cupboard taking up space, snidely judging my canned soup collection with its bulky, difficult to read face. I resent it.

I hope you've finished lunch - this is probably the most gruesome desktop computer accessory in the world - and would seriously gross any normal human being, let alone your nice sister who would much prefer something from this season's Monsoon collection.

As part of our helpful series - What not to get for Christmas - we introduce the "mechanical tumour" which inflates as your computer's stress levels rise. The danger of you accidentally buying this for your sister is reduced by the fact that it's a one-off artwork rather than something you come across on Amazon when browsing for memory sticks.

Unveiled a few weeks ago, this hit the screens of the world and caused small gagging reactions across the globe.

As mobile phones get more and more desirable and ergonomic - landlines, those weird pieces of machinery attached to the wall with a wire have to do something a bit special to justify their existence. Like looking crazy.

The Candle Stick phone from Brando harks right back to a time well well before handheld telephony devices, and probably before the second world war. It's has a cute Victorian brothel meets post-box air about it. And yes, you hold the earpiece to your ear and speak into the box.

However, the Candle Stick does make some concessions to modernity - there's a digital time display, you press buttons (in the shape of a dial) rather than spinning the dial and it all presumably works a well as a normal phone.
We say - impractical but cute.

Costs $75 from Brando

Related: Retro-Ringing Gear The Amadana PT-108 wireless landline

Not every woman is born gifted in the kitchen department. Traditional recipe books take up far too much room, are impractical in the kitchen and lets face it, when you see a recipe written on a page it doesn't make you salivate with hunger. So what does an attention challenged kitchenley inept woman like me need?? Could it possibly be an interactive digital cookbook.

Belling are releasing the Media Chef, which comes loaded with 48 cook-along tutorials with chef Brian Turner who's incidentally attempting to "bring back grannies' recopies". It has an 8" screen and a compact remote control so you can play, pause rewind demonstrations so you're not struggling to keep up.

When you're not using it to cook it can be used as a calender, digital photo frame or general media player.

There are questions to be asked however...will it be splash-friendly and can you download more tutorials...

Price wise it's around £179 but there's no hints as to release date.

[via Engadget]

By Genevieve Sibayan

Classic gadget the Teasmade - an icon of the sixties and seventies - has been redesigned, and is now in stock at John Lewis.

Cunningly combining an alarm clock and a kettle, the idea is simple: Teasmade times the kettle to have a cup of tea ready for you by the time the alarm goes off.

First patented back in 1902, it's an eccentric English gadget of the finest order. The Birmingham gunsmith who applied for the license called it: "An Apparatus Whereby a Cup of Tea or Coffee is Automatically Made" and it was later marketed as "A Clock That Makes Tea!" (!)

If getting your weight on the dial of the bathroom scales wasn't bad enough - how about getting it showing up on your iPhone as well? Yes - now you can. It's all thanks to a wifi-connected weighing machine that sends information about your weight and body mass index to your iPhone and your personal webpage as soon as you step on the scales.

Along with the Wifi Body Scale from Withings you get a (secure) personal page on their website, and can download their free iPhone app WiScale.

It's not just the figures that turn up on your phone, the WiScale app converts all the readings into graphs so you can see exactly the effect that week in Barcelona had on your body fat ratio. Having this information on your phone may prove to be an effective easy-access deterrent when reaching for the mid-afternoon doughnut.

Follow on after the jump

Frothy milk is pretty much haute cuisine as far as homemade coffee goes. Top coffee-nerds will have coffee machines with steam nozzles which fire steam through milk both heating and frothing at the same time - the ideal situation. But to the amateur with just a cafetiere and yearning for latte, a simple milk-frother does more or less a similar job. And even a little frothing can produce good results.

As coffee-geek puts it wisely: "Incorporating air into the milk improves and sweetens the taste. Milk that has not been foamed at all tends to taste flat and dull by comparison."

Proper full-on frothing produces this: "microfoam--a pourable, virtually liquid foam that tastes sweet and rich.... The only distinction it has from liquid milk is a soft, slightly spectral sheen in the right light."

Click on the image to start the gallery.

After we told you about the Cuisinart Soup Maker from John Lewis, we promised we would be bringing you the top five of these.

However, why should we just stick to these when there are so many kitchen gadgets out there to help make your cooking life easier?

Therefore, we've decided to give you a treat and round up the gadgets to give you a hand in the kitchen.

By the time we're finished we think you may be able to be a strong contender on Come Dine with Me, after all it's not really cheating, is it?

Click on the picture below to start the gallery.

With the winter season fast approaching, it's time to think about replacing your tankini's for tights and smoothies for soup, and it seems John Lewis is giving us a helping hand with the latter.

The highstreet store has added the Cuisinart Soup Maker to its range of kitchen gadgets, which lets you make fresh hot soup, with no added preservatives in just 20 minutes from start to finish (eat your heart out Jamie and Gordon).

Now we're not the best of cooks, but we think this little gadget will make us look better than Nigella in the kitchen.

All you have to do is set your cooking time, select the low temperature setting and separately fry any base ingredients; such as garlic and onions until soft (that's soft, not burnt.)

You can then use the soup maker's stir function and add all your other ingredients such as stock and seasoning and even choose your soups consistency (does that mean we can wave goodbye to lumpy, porridge type soups then?)

However, it doesn't end there, this kitchen marvel can also be used to make sauces, dips, dressings, purées, smoothies, cocktails and desserts and it can also crush ice.

Now we recommend you hide the evidence after you cook, what's more beneficial than telling your other half or housemate that you've been slaving over a hot stove, yes that's right they have to do the washing up.

Look out tomorrow for our picks of the best soup makers around.

I know kitchen implements are there to be useful... they open tins, contain hot things and facilitate the making of millefeuille pastry. But sometimes they're so much more than that. Sometimes, they become things you want really badly with a desire that eclipses any potential usefulness they could possibly have. These are five kitchen implements that make me feel that way.

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The dark liquid that flows in the veins of the workforce, coffee is a popular drink. American coffee-drinkers consume an average 3.1 cups a day (according to coffeeresearch.org) - sadly British statistics haven't been compiled, but I imagine we're not far behind. If you're going to drink that much of it, it might as well be good. We look at the best machines for making café-standard espresso in the comfort of your kitchen.

Cafetieres, Filter Coffee Makers and Percolators use plungers, filters and steam to make coffee. We're looking at the fourth type of coffee-maker: espresso and cappuccino makers, which make stronger more intense coffees and are what you see in professional coffee shops.

To look out for in an espresso machine:
1. What kind of coffee do you use with it?
Expresso machines need extra-finely ground coffee. Some machines use coffee pods which are easier to clean up afterwards and keep for slightly long than normal coffee. Called Nespresso machines, these pod-users are convenient, but you're tied into buying that maker's selection of coffees. (Unless you hack them by recycling a pod with your own coffee and a bit of tinfoil: see a video of entrepreneurial nespresso machine hacker.)

2. Is it steam or pump driven?
Espresso machines either use steam or pressure to force the water through the coffee grounds: cheaper machines use steam, more expensive machines use pumps. Commercial coffee-sellers use pumps.

3. The bar pressure
Bar pressure defines at what pressure the steam meets the coffee granules at the correct speed. If it's too slow, it could result in a bitter taste. 15 - 19 bar is the optimum, though some suppliers claim 9-11 bar is enough if the beans have been ground correctly.
Pump machines have better bar pressure than steam machines.

4. Does it have a milk steamer?
I love frothy milk beyond reason and most espresso machines come with a steam wand, which shoots steam through milk, heating and frothing it for use in cappuccinos and lattes.

Prices range from about £40 to the frankly horrifying £999 (for a deLonghi Prima Donna Espresso Coffee-maker)

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Ever battle with the office girls for who gets to use the microwave first at lunch? Frustrating isn't it? Research has shown that many people don't even eat lunch because they're too busy/lazy to go out and get some nosh. Well Heinz have decided that's not acceptable and have created the Micro Microwave so that no one need venture down the hall in search of a device. It measures in at 150 x 160 x 190mm, and works via the USB port on your computer. As yet there's no release date or price, but hopefully the day when we'll all have our own micro microwaves isn't too far away.

[via T3]

More USB gadgets here

Sometimes you stumble across exciting gadgets which fulfill a need you never realised you had, and then you shudder back to reality as you learn it's just a concept. Well here we have a device that has all the hallmarks of an artist rendering (stylistic imagery/new age connections) but which actually exists.

Technology has long been used to aid and enhance our life. At its highest (and yes I do mean most expensive) form there are tools available to cater for your every whim - you can have a robotic maid, automatic dishwashers and computers that wake you up with a personalized hello and back massage tailored to your needs... There are also toilets that analyze your waste matter and suggest what type of nutrients you're lacking..if you must go that far!

Computers have shifted from being lumbering behemoths to super sleek devices which continually keep shrinking and the word netbook is now all the rage. Everything is slimmer sleeker, and shinier nowadays, but how does this actually affect you?

OK, I know you don't tend to take a microwave with you wherever you go, but there's no denying an office that's lacking that mean machine is like an office with no computers- simply unworkable. Sure, you can work off laptops, or go to Pret for lunch, but those options aren't ever going to be your first choice.

The mo:ben lunchbox is designed to keep your leftovers warm, and contains both insulated walls AND an AC plug. Simply plug in the box and your leftovers will be gently warned up, ready to eat!

No matter how much you strategically try and avoid it, there will come a point in the week when your garbage bin will reek of a dump site (unless you're incredibly anal and take out your trash everyday). All it takes is one banana peel and the remnants of the past few days dinner and you're greeted by an overpowering aroma of decomposing refuse. It's not nice and its ability to induce multiple gag reflexes is multiplied when you bring hot weather into the equation.

How about freezing your garbage? No silly, I'm not talking about putting your trash in the freezer! I'm talking about the Minus Frozen Garbage Container concept design.