"CNET" news and stories

Are you always looking for new ways to eat on the go? Well if you are, there may be something coming soon just for you.

This design for Fast Food Cutlery was submitted to DesignBoom as part of a contest called "Dining in 2015." This wasn't one of the winning designs, but that doesn't mean it won't get manufactured. Fast Food Cutlery would be a fun and interesting way to eat on the go. At least it would help keep your hands a little cleaner, and make eating in the car a little easier (I know you shouldn't eat in the car, but sometimes you have to).

One of the winning designs was cutlery that fits on a pen tip. I personally think the Fast Food Cutlery is a better idea. The pen-tip cutlery isn't much different from the plastic cutlery that's available everywhere, and we all know that's not as effective. You'd still have to remember to actually bring the product with you and then home to wash, which would rule it out for those of us with memory problems. Still, Fast Food Cutlery looks fun and easy to use, especially if you like to eat with your hands anyway. I'd get one if I saw it, if it wasn't too expensive. Would you?

[Via Cnet/Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets]

Peanut butter has always been a staple food in my life. As a kid, a piece of whole wheat toast, smeared with a dollop of peanut butter and topped with jam was a regular breakfast. I often had a pb and honey sandwich in my lunchbox (my mom was a fan of heaping on the peanut butter, making sandwiches so thick that they made lunch time conversations impossible) and it wasn't uncommon to have an afternoon snack of sliced apple or celery sticks with a tiny dish of peanut butter for dipping.

These days, I always have a jar of peanut butter in the fridge, with a back-up in the cupboard (it is a sad day when I discover that I've forgotten to replace my secondary jar). Like my mother before me, I only buy the natural peanut butter and the one problem with this style of butter is that the oil separates out. I always pour the majority of the oil off and then stir the remaining oil back into the peanut butter. However, this tactic means that the last inch of peanut butter is often dry and nearly impossible to spread, as I never to a great job of getting the oil all the way to the bottom.

One way to handle the separation is to store the unopened jar upside down so that when you open it up, the oil is dispersed a bit better. However, since I do like to pour some of the oil off, that technique doesn't work well for me. However, thanks to CNET's Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets blog, I've learned that there's a gizmo (with the fabulous name Grandpa Witmer's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer) you can buy to help you stir your peanut butter. I know that this isn't tool for everyone, but for those of us who love our natural peanut butter, this one could be a lifesaver. You screw it on to the top of your jar, turn the knob and the stirring wand does the rest. Sign me up!

Source

Back in January, I got a letter from CHOW Magazine, telling me that they were temporarily stopping the publication of their print edition in order to regroup. In the interim, their website, Chow for Now, put together some good content. Today I got a small card in the mail telling me that (a) CHOW has been acquired by CNET Networks, Inc., the same folks responsible for the recent facelift of Chowhound.com, and (b) that the rest of my subscription to CHOW would be fulfilled by a subscription to Intermezzo, a food, wine, home and travel magazine. I've leafed through a few issues of Intermezzo in the past, but was never compelled enough to actually buy a copy. Sigh. So far, I think the new Chowhound site is great, mainly because of the searchable forums with RSS feeds. I'm assuming that sometime soon a blend of Chow and Chowhound will take shape. Chow.com is still pretty much vacant, aside from a place to leave an email address for launch news. With any luck, the type of content that made CHOW such a great publication will begin show up online.

As an old-school Chowhound, cut my teeth as Canchito and then changed my identity to Joey Deckle, I was glad to hear months ago that Jim Leff found an angel in C-Net . Now the site that started as a sprawling food forum and evolved exponentially into a labor of savor would now be recognized and monetized by an organization of like mind and like palate.

I knew that Chowound 2.0 was about to hit the street any minute thanks to my fellow Slashfoodies' coverage. But nothing prepared me for clicking on a familiar link at 3AM yesterday and seeing something completely different. A mere six hours earlier, I was scrolling through the site's old-school bulletin-board listings.

I guess never got the press release. All of sudden I found an alien universe looking back from my monitor. As a benchmark, I entered a smorgasbord of topics that had been written about into the site's search field. Sure enough, natto, churrasco and vestedde all turned up. So far so good. But it took me more than a few minutes to find the regional boards and ultimately realize that  the hot  posts (a summary of all the boards' latest posts)  had been folded into the front page.

More than anything my late-night  discovery of CH's new launch reminded me of my first experiences with the site. There's a lot of delicousness to be discovered/shared here, I just need to figure out how to serve it up.   

The Wall Street Journal was able to get a sneak peek at Chowhound's new interface, which will be relaunched in the next month or so by CNET, which acquired the message board back in March. Unfortunately, for us, there isn't a screenshot for us to check out yet, but the WSJ fills in a lot of blanks that Jim Leff, Chowhound.com's founder, left out when we first heard about the deal.

Chowhound will not only get a software upgrade, but it will become part of a CNET food website called Chow.com. Though the old Chowhound site will still be accessible, the new one is aiming to attract more people from across the country, not just in big cities. One of the biggest changes is that, instead of being able to post anonymously, anyone who wishes to post will have to register.

CNET says that it doesn't want to alienate any of the old users, which is an understandable position because the huge foodie community is the main reason it purchased the site in the first place. Whether it will happen or not, even though Jim Leff is still working on the site behind the scenes, remains to be seen.