Maybe it's because I lived alone for several years, but I've never been one to linger at the table during or after a meal. I'd fix my food, sit down just long enough to devour it, and then immediately leap up, clean my dishes, and go on with my evening. I know I should savor it a little more, but my impatience takes over. (Obviously, dinner with friends is another story).

But if you regularly linger at your table, or spend time chatting with meal companions, this bowl with a spoon rest might be just for you. No more resting your spoon on your bowl or dirtying your tablecloth - if you want to take a break from eating, just prop your spoon in its little seat until you're ready to chow again.

Conveniently, the spoon comes with the bowl, so it fits perfectly, although I can't promise that just any ol' spoon would do the trick. Although for $21, you might just want to just stick your spoon on a place mat and be done with it.

[via] Boing Boing

Too lazy to use a knife? Sick of switching back and forth from fork to spoon when you eat your Ramen noodles?

Ah, yes. These dining conundrums have befallen even the best of us at one time or another. The solution?

Enter, crazy new cutlery. The Washington Post's Jane Black reviewed a few new designs that promise to rid us of our dining woes (or, at the very least, provide us with fodder for our next dinner party conversation).

Among the new designs:

• The "Knork," designed to serve as both knife and fork. A little awkward, but helpful for those parties where the you're perched in a corner, attempting to eat off of a tiny paper plate with just a fork.
• Mono Zeug Tools are based on primitive Neanderthal designs, in that the knife is designed to be a piece of honed flint, and the spoon, a variation of a curved oyster shell.
  
• Curvware is designed to be ergonomic so that you don't strain your hand or grip too hard when attempting to, say, cut your steak. Black pronounced it "very comfortable."
• Ramen spoon - Admit it: Ramen noodles can be annoying to eat. This design changes all that, with a spoon for the broth and fork tines for those slippery noodles. And while I wouldn't go so far as to call it "genius," as Block does, it is pretty neat. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait 'til May before you buy it.
  

Check out the video of Black testing out these new tools here.

Designboom, a mod blog devoted to the latest and greatest in product design, recently came out with the winners of its 2006 Dining in 2015 contest. The challenge was exactly as it sounds: to design a food-related product that would be useful in 2015 at work, in travel, or at home.

Chefs and designers from Italy and Japan judged the entires and came up with the top three and an honorable mention.

Let's start from the bottom and work up. The honorable mention [ed. note: shown in photo] was an eco-friendly solution to dinner prep: silicone and nylon triangle-shaped buckets that allow the cook to boil three different foods all in one pot, thereby saving energy, time, and water. I totally expect it to be selling out on QVC in no time.

Third place? A creative ceramic salt and pepper shaker that forces you to physically break open the canister to access the spices inside. The goal of the project? There isn't any, really, but we bet it's really, really fun to break open. Save it for a day when you're really pissed off at someone, and then smash away. (But don't get carried away - - then you'll just have a mess of salt, pepper, and white ceramic shards to clean up).

Let's face it: if you're not in the house, you're probably not using silverware. But eating with your hands is not only messy, but sometimes it's just not all that convenient. Fried chicken and burgers are fine when eaten out of hand, but what about potato salad or pie?

This nomad traveling silverware set attaches to a lanyard that you can wear around your neck when out hiking or keep in the glove compartment of your car (for emergencies). It includes a miniature stainless steel fork, knife, spoon and bottle opener, all of which tuck neatly away in a plastic case when not in use.

You could use plastic silverware, but this is not only more practical, but it's more eco-friendly, since there is nothing to throw away. A few uses, and this $20 gadget will pay for itself - not to mention that it would made a great gift for anyone who is outdoor-oriented and not taking all their meals at a dining room table.

Have you ever seen one of those spoons that is dipped in honey, candy/sugar or chocolate before packaging? The idea with those is that they can be stirred into hot drinks to add flavor. These ice spoons work on the same principle, but for cold drinks. Possible applications include: filling them with juice and use them to flavor iced tea or other drinks as they melt and filling them with the tea (lemonade, etc) to easily stir in sugar and cool the drink all at the same time - without diluting it with extra ice. Of course, they'll look good when just filled with plain water, too.

There are also applications for serving with these, putting little bits of appetizers that you want to remain cold  on the end of each spoon.

When the spork was first invented, there is little doubt that its creators thought that they had created the ultimate fusion of eating utensils. The spork soon spread to school cafeterias and even into those little plastic baggies they pass out with the meal on airplanes. But the spork wasn't as useful as it could be because you couldn't cut anything with it. To compensate, airplanes included knives with their sporks and schools prepare lunches with no discernable texture. The spork, however, has finally evolved to take cutting abilities into account. The Spork/Knife, coined as the sporknif by Bea of La Tartine Gourmande, has a fork/knife on one end and a paddle-like spoon on the other. It is made from durable, heat-resistant PC material, comes in a variety of colors and only costs a few dollars.

You may never need another utensil again.