"kitchen " news and stories

Could a restaurant be so appealing, so irresistable, that you'd wait a year to get a reservation?

This one apparently is: Talula's Table in rural Pennsylvania, has been called the most difficult reservation to get in the country. Talula's is about an hour outside of Philly, has only one large farm table that seats 12, and is run by a husband and wife team. There's a store that sells cakes, pies, soups, and over 150 different kinds of cheeses (the co-owner spent her life studying cheeses).

But the real treat appears to be the restaurant. The eight-course tasting menu, which features fresh and primarily local ingredients, is the same every day for about 5-6 weeks, and then changes depending on what's in season.

The day that one NPR reporter visited, the menu was as follows: egg custard; mushroom risotto; hand-rolled rigatoni with snails; pampano roasted with a mango-saffron broth; pork osso bucco; lamb; blue-raisin chutney semolina; and for dessert - deep breath - a coffee-infused bavarian creme with bittersweet and white chocolate over a piece of buttery shortbread, covered in a blood orange jelly.

And for the record? If you want a reservation, call them tomorrow starting at 7 a.m. The first person to call that day gets the next reservation a year from now, and the process repeats itself the next day, and the next, and the next...

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I was just over at Crate&Barrel, swooning over all of the gorgeous new kitchen gadgets for spring. My new favorite? The oil and vinegar pump bottle, which allows you to pres a button and squeeze precise amounts of the mixture into a resevoir, where you can then pour it onto your salad, fish, bread...or directly into your mouth. (Wait. that would be gross. Scratch that).

Craving more fun, brightly-colored kitchen doodads? You know you are. Check out the marvelousness below.

In a funny post on a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reader blog, blogger Christina Hyun talks about growing up in an Asian household, and how her friends always told her that her house smelled better than their's did. On the flip side, Hyun always marveled at the huge quantity of bread/cereal/cookie products in her Caucasian friends' houses.

I can't relate as much to the cultural aspect, but as a kid, I was definitely envious of my friends' kitchens. My own mother tried to keep our diets pretty healthy, and flat-out refused to buy certain products (Fruit Roll-Ups, Ssips fruit punch, and Cookie Crisp cereal immediately come to mind). Other kids' parents often commented on my "healthy" appetite, as I downed cakes, cookies and fruit punch like it was going out of style. "Oh - my mom won't let us buy this stuff," I'd say, mouth half-full of Tastykake pie, red goo stuck to my chin. The mothers would nod warily as they added "Tastykake pies" to the grocery list.

As I got older, the rules loosened, and I heard rumors that my mom even allowed soda in the house - after I went off to college, of course. But by then the thrill was gone, and fear-mongering about obesity and diabetes had taken its place.

What about you? What products did other kids' kitchens have that made you green with envy? (Or were you that "other kid?")

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Your dream could soon become a reality, if ReadyBot has anything to say about it. A group of scientists banned together to answer a challenge question: How many common and household commercial tasks can a two-armed, moderate-dexterity simple robot perform?

The answer: plenty. to see ReadyBot in action, click on the video, which is set to music similar to that of 50s Sears infomercials. So far, the Bot can raise and lower itself; grab, move, and tip dishes; and squeegee and wash countertops. Between this and a Roomba, just think of the possibilities! Your very own version of The Jetsons' Rosie (though it always irked me that she had female traits - ReadyBot will hopefully remain gender-neutral).

As you watch the clip, you'll notice that it moves fairly slowly, but the Bot scientists claim that this is intentional, and that it is intended to do work when people are at work or out of the house, so the lack of speed shouldn't be an issue.

Their ultimate goal? To program ReadyBot to complete approximately 80% of typical kitchen tasks (loading the dishwasher, washing dishes, etc) and then make it available for mass production. The scientists also claim that the price won't be too prohibitive, but we'll believe it when we see it.

In the meantime, one can only dream...

Every time you turn around, there's a new brightly-colored, cleverly-named kitchen product adorned with google-y eyes and baring a twenty dollar price tag. We've all come across these products, smiled, cooed, and handed over our Visa, only to get them home and dizzily wonder, What the heck was I thinking? The utensil then sits unused, in your junk drawer, until, in a furious bout of spring cleaning three years later, you stumble upon it and have absolutely no idea what it is.

Don't feel bad. We've all done this. It's awful fun to peruse these items at stores, play with them, and make them into little puppets in order to entertain/freak out your other customers (in fact, the latter is one of my favorite pastimes). So in an effort to dissuade you from buying these little gadgets in the future, we've provided some of them here, so you'll know 'em when you see 'em.

Now, for the record, I understand that these products do serve some purpose, however insignificant. And if you happen to own one of these products, more power to you! I am simply suggesting that there are, perhaps, other ways to accomplish the same kitchen tasks that these products purport to execute...

Now, without further ado...