"future" news and stories

Is you dream refrigerator a giant Subzero or a colorful, retro Big Chill? Designers are already thinking outside of the box when it comes to restyling refrigerators and, if they get their way, we might be looking at a totally different appliance in the future. This is the Tree House Fridge, a design concept from the team of Chuan Shi, Wenying Lu, Chuan Shi & Yu Li at Yanko Design. Its unique layout presents an interesting possibility of what fridges could be like in the not-too-distant future. Each of the branches will be specifically designed to store a certain type of food - cheese, produce, etc - and will have a slide-out compartment in the trunk for larger things and drinks. To take advantage of the tree shape, the branches will have holders on the doors where fruit can be stored and "picked" at will.

A tree, of course, seems a bit extreme, but it is not so far-fetched to imagine separated, specialized compartments that will keep food fresher than the salad drawers that many refrigerators are equipped with now.

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It may not be available just yet, but you can put our names on the list for the ROLLERtoaster when it hits the market. It is definitely the toaster of the future. Sleek and compact, the toaster was designed by Jaren Goh of Singapore and won a 2006 Red Dot Design Award for innovation. Goh was inspired by the change of televisions from large and bulky boxes to streamlined flat-panels which retained all the functionality of the larger unit in a much more compact product. He applied that to a common appliance,the toaster, and the ROLLERtoaster was born. Slices of bread are "fed" into one side of the machine and are rolled through, fully toasted, to the other side where your plate awaits. The only potential problem is that it doesn't look like it will be able to handle bagels easily. Then again, neither do a lot of other toasters, so perhaps it's not as big a problem as one might think.

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If you have visited a few theme parks in the past, say, 10 years, chances are good that you have come across a product called Dippin' Dots. Dippin' Dots are small beads of ice cream (sorbet and yogurt are available, as well) that are frozen with liquid nitrogen. Described by the company as the "ice cream of the future," they come in a variety of flavors and are certainly novel to eat. The beads seem fairly "dry" in the serving cup, but melt once they're in your mouth.

Up until recently, the Dots were only available in theme parks and at fairs. The company then expanded to special vending machines and to retail outlets at many shopping malls. Keeping the supply limited was a good way to protect the novelty of their product, but now a new product called Dots n' Cream, which is a combination of Dippin' Dots and ice cream, will be carried at supermarkets.

Ice cream with bits of super-frozen ice cream? Sounds like a strange concept to me. I think one of the malls nearby just opened a Dippin' Dots store. I'll probably just head over there if I get the urge for some novelty frozen treats, but I can see how this would be a hit with kids since it's like bringing a bit of the theme park home.

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Alain Ducasse, one of the most successful restaurateurs in the world and holder of 9 Michelin stars, has begun to prepare meals that will go where no haute cuisine - or even anything worthy of being called a cuisine - has gone before: outer space. The chef is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French National Center for Space Studies to create gourmet foods that can be packaged for consumption on space flights, giving astronauts a taste of something better than the garden variety rations then get now.

Currently, astronauts have an extremely limited array of food to choose from when on a flight, the vast majority of it being freeze-dried or vacuum-sealed. They have very limited cooking supplies and no fresh vegetables, leading them to crave foods like salads and hot coffee when they land back on Earth. Ducasse's line, which is called Space Food, will still have to be packaged specially, but will include favorites like rice pudding (in soy milk) and chicken with Thai veggies.

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