Every Labor Day Weekend, I go off with some friends to a family camp down on the Chesapeake Bay. The first night we get there, the camp staff always lights a big bonfire for us and we stand around toasting marshmallows and making s'mores. Part of the fun of it is working to find that right angle and that perfect pocket of heat that will slowly brown the marshmallow instead of setting in ablaze, leaving you with a charred outside and a still-cold inside. I like that roasting marshmallows over an open fire is an activity that has been mostly unchanged for years and is one that requires little pre-planning or special equipment.

This is why I'm a little perplexed by this gadget I spotted being advertised today. It's called a Spinmallow and it is a motorized marshmallow toasting device. I think it's a clever idea and yet I can't help but feel sort of disappointed by it, that we can no longer just find a find a serviceable stick and rotate it ourselves.

What do you all think? Useless gadget or brilliant brainchild?

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.

We love toast here at Slashfood, but we think that toast is a little more fun when you can customize it. We're not referring to whether you like your toast light or dark, with butter or with Nutella, but to actually using a design for the toast itself. So far, we have see snakes on toast, pop art on toast, love notes on toast and Disney characters. None of those can top the Zuse Toast Printer, though. This wall-mounted toaster can burn - by which we mean toast - any 12x12 px image onto your toast using "a technology similar to early matrix printers," working line by line until the image has been reproduced. The toaster comes with some images already uploaded, but it sounds as though you would be able to add your own to the image inventory, too.

I have no idea what that little cube guy under the toaster is supposed to be, but I can think of at least a few designs that would make my morning toast a little more interesting.

[via SciFi Tech]

A bagel lover can spend days, even weeks, trying to find a toaster that will comfortably fit extra-wide bagel slices. With most toasters, you end up having to stuff a bagel half in a too-small slot, which inevitably results in a bagel that is burned on one side. And that's all after you contend with those plastic "bagel slicers" that squish the bagel more effectively than they cleave it. The Westinghouse ToasterSlicer both toast and slices - and it is designed specifically for bagels.

The bagel is loaded whole into the slot at the back and, after pushing the machine's "slice" button and closing the slot, the bagel pops out fully toasted (and sliced!) from the other end after a few minutes. It can also toast regular bread, but it is more of a single-purpose gadget. But if you eat a lot of bagels, it is a gadget that would certainly come in handy! It's $43 at Overstock.com.

This bag of dried Peruvian corn or cancha also turned up as a result of some spring cleaning. Truth be told, I was cleaning my car. My girlfriend left it in the back seat a few weeks ago, after a visit to our local Hispanic supermarket. We've always enjoyed the small bowls of cancha that our favorite Peruvian restaurant serves, so making it at home seemed like a good idea. (As an aside, yes, I know that these are probably not all that different than the Popnots that I spoke less than fondly of a few weeks ago.) Basically, these large dried kernels get popped just like popcorn, except that they don't really turn inside out, they just puff up and turn golden brown. The Goya website has a recipe, but really all you need to do is heat a little vegetable oil in a pot with a tight lid, add the corn and shake it until it pops, then drain it on some paper towels and toss with salt. It's a great snack by itself, with some hot sauce and especially with ceviche.