Our friends over at Engadget tipped us off to a really unusual diet-helper called the Smart Plate. The 15-cm plate was invented by a Ukrainian scientist, Dr. Hryhory Chausovsky, and is weight sensitive. When the plate is overloaded with food, a palm sized computer attached to the plate is activated and audio alerts are triggered. At that point, acting like your own personal "weight-watcher," the plate will reprimand the user, saying things like, "Stop right there! And what about excess weight?" and "Where's your willpower?" If you really have a problem with overloaded your plate, especially in a buffet-type of situation, it would be worth getting a few odd looks as you pulled out your own dish if it helped you keep your diet under control. And having your plate reprimand you in public is significantly more embarrassing than just bringing out the plate itself, so there is a good chance that the plate really would keep you on track.

Dr. Chausovsky has a number of other weight-loss aids to his name, too. He has a second version of the plate that has a different type of sensor. This one will play music faster and faster, depending on the speed at which food is eaten and the rate at which utensils touch the surface of the dish. Slower eating would keep the music at a normal tempo. He also has a belt that monitors a stomach's expansion during a meal, an armband that monitors calorie intake per bite, a refrigerator magnet that demands"Are you here because you are really hungry, or is it just your emotions?" when the door is opened and "food spectacles" that are tinted to make good food look unappealing.

Chausovsky says that he doesn't take any money for any of his inventions, since he got into the business to benefit people, not to profit from them.

These unusual ceramic plates have a couple of different uses and are so visually interesting that it's almost a surprise that they're not in any high-end restaurants, especially one where they deal with less traditional foods and presentations. The Dish It Up dishes come in three sizes that can be fit together along their "cut" edge. They could be used for portion control, if you're looking for a practical purpose to justify buying them and more artistic platings are not your goal. One other interesting feature of the dishes is that they can be stored vertically, resting on their straight edge, which minimizes the amount of cabinet space they take up. They are sold in sets that include one each of the small, medium and large sizes.

The worst thing about cooking is, without question, the cleanup. Once you have cooked and eaten your fill, the last thing that you want to do is do the dishes. The process seems daunting when you don't have a dishwasher, and somewhat less so if you do have one, but it's called a "chore" because it is one.

Chip, at Cook Think Blog, put together a brief guide to loading a dishwasher properly, with tips that can really help you make the most out of each wash. Before you laugh, keep in mind that having a system makes doing the dishes go much, much faster than it ordinarily would. You'll spend five minutes loading because you know where everything goes, versus 20 minutes trying to figure out how to cram everything in. Here are a few to start with:

• The used ends of forks and spoons should be pointing up, maximizing exposure to the water, while knife blades should point down.
• Plates should not be loaded by size, again to maximize exposure to water.
• Bowls should go on the top rack, not the bottom.