Before you consider investing in La Caja China, there are a couple of questions that you need to ask yourself. The first is, how serious are you about cooking pork? The second is, how much meat do you want to cook at one time?

La Caja China is - quite literally - a large box that is used for roasting a pig in Chinese fashion, though it is hugely popular in Florida's Cuban community and anywhere else that people want to roast whole pigs. The medium sized model costs almost $300 and can hold up to a 70-lb pig (the large can handle a 100-lb swine). If you don't want to go the whole hog, it can also be used to roast 16-18 whole chickens, 4-6 turkeys, 8-10 pork ribs slabs, 8-10 pork shoulders or any other type of meat, all at the same time.

The way that it works is that a dressed pig is laid inside the box. The box is shut and covered with charcoal. After a few hours inside the aluminum-lined Caja China, the meat of the pig is cooked. At that point, the pig is flipped over - getting the skin side nearer to the indirect heat source - and the skin crisps up to be a dark golden color. The whole process takes a few hours, but connoisseurs say that the juicy meat and crispy skin is worth every minute of waiting time, although you may want to run errands or something while the pig cooks.

As for getting a whole pig, you're on your own.

Yesterday, NPR's All Things Considered featured a story about how current restrictions on flying with liquids is affecting Napa Valley tourists and wineries. Obviously, it's common to bring some wine back from the wineries you visit, but not being able to carry those bottles on-board a plane is posing a problem that has many wineries worried. The situation is especially troubling to small wineries that rely on sales directly to visitors, as opposed to distributors. Checking glass of any kind in one's luggage is a scary prospect, of course. So, some wineries are offering styrofoam wine carriers that they hope will protect checked wine. Others are offering free shipping on large enough purchases. The styrofoam box pictured here comes from Uline Shipping Supplies.

Normally, I don't make a habit of covering sites with the word cute in the URL (I"ll leave that to all you knitting bloggers), but Cooking Cute looks to be a bento site worth noting. The recently launched site has plenty of tips for packing and preparing bento lunches, a glossary of terms, recipes and links to way more bento blogs than I ever knew existed. I'm also fond of the bento calendar, which features photos and links to descriptions of the different meals. And you know, aside from a bunny and a few flowers, the cute isn't that overpowering.

It's fun to check out Topher's Cereal Character Guide, which lists just about every cartoon cereal character you can imagine (and some you can't), but another fun part of the cereal box is the back. The back of the boxes have games, puzzles, promotions and other information. They change frequently, but there is a site that has a cereal box archive, with photos of both the fronts and the backs of hundreds of cereal boxes. Many of the boxes advertise free or discounted products that tie in to the cereal itself. Merchandise includes dartboards, gum and even door knockers - all of which can make us remember why we got up to eat cereal and watch cartoons on weekend mornings: free stuff. 

In January, the city of Oakland, California, just across the bay from San Francisco, instituted a tax on businesses that they believed created the most litter in the city. The city council felt that businesses needed to be more socially responsible for their customer's actions, while business owners opposed the measure, saying that packaging is necessary to sell goods - particularly food items - in a safe and sanitary manner.

Now, city businesses have to change the way they package their food, in addition to paying for it, because the city has just banned styrofoam food packaging.

Due to take effect in January, the measure says that all food packaging must be biodegradable when composted with food waste. Supporters of the law point out that 15 percent of the litter collected in storm drains is styrofoam/polystyrene packaging. They gained additional support from the fact that there are 100 other cities, including Portland and neighboring Berkeley, which have similar bans, and San Francisco is expected to join that list later this year.

The city will use fines ranging from $100-$500 to enforce the measure and businesses that still use styrofoam will have have to find another way to keep their food warm.

 

A Belgian man, Philippe Meert , used to have difficulty getting all his cereal in the bowl in the mornings. Like many people, he would simply open the box and rip open a portion of the cereal bag within, causing it to spill out the sides of the box and onto the table as he poured. It's hard to say whether residual sleepiness or sloppy box-opening was the main problem, but Meert wanted something that would make pouring easy (and accurate) for even the laziest breakfaster.

In 2004, Meert came out with a product called the Cerealtop, a plastic pouring spout that is designed to clamp onto a cereal box top and make pours easy-to-control. It adjusts to fit any box size and simply snaps onto the open box. Cerealtop is available online from Europe for about $6, but will be hitting the US market this fall for $3.95. 

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I didn't much like to drink plain old water. I salute the ingenuity of the folks that came up with Wateroos, juice boxes of water, but I just don't know if kids are gonna go for it, cute little penguin or not. I will give them props for calling the penguin and his turtle companion "wateroo-ligans," however. Aside from purified water, there's also a sugar-free, no-juice, apple-flavored version. According to their press release, Wateroos are the first and only boxed water beverage on the market.

[Via BevNET]

I recently came across the Mr. Bento Stainless Lunch Jar by Zojirushi. Some of you may be familiar with the company as the maker of other appliances like breadmakers and rice machines. Their rice machines look like they could put a man on the moon and they even play cute little songs. That said, it's no surprise that Zojirushi makes a bento like this. The casing is stainless steel and holds four microwaveable bowls, as well as chopsticks and a chopstick holder. All of it stays in a zippered carrying bag. It looks like they generally sell for about $50. The "Fun!Fun!Fun!" section of the site is also worth checking out.