Concept Kitchens for the Environmentally Conscious

Modern kitchens hold a wealth of instruments that weren’t heard of, much less conceived, as little as a century ago. But our microwaves and convection ovens, as well as our dishwashers and our ice machines are staples of today’s kitchen atmosphere.

But as the world “goes green” the kitchen begins to look more like a vampire of energy use and chemical runoff than a place for us to prepare our sustenance. Thanks to our constantly running appliances as well as our questionable cleaners and soaps, the kitchen is coming under scrutiny as one of the least energy efficient places in the home. Yet there is hope for the modern kitchen in the form of the Brandt Aion, perhaps the cleanest, “greenest,” and most futuristic kitchen concept ever.

The Aion, designed by French industrial designer

Light Up Your Sink With LED Faucet Lights

The last room in the house that you probably think about when it comes to gadgets is the bathroom, but that's just where LED faucet lights come in. The kitchen comes in second to last, of course, and the kitchen is generally considered another gadget-sparse environment. While both rooms do use devices that you could definitely call "gadgets" you don't really think of such gadgets as "cool." Not so with LED faucet lights. These things turn the water stream from your sink faucet a different color.

Now, why would you even want to do such a thing? Well, for starters, you have to admit, it is pretty cool--and being able to wash your hands after a late-night bathroom trip without turning on the lights would be pretty convenient, don't you think? Not to mention the look on the kids' faces when they go to brush their teeth for the first time. Basically, it's a way to make your bathroom a little bit more interesting.

Just think about that for a moment: an

Wireless Recipes

Here’s the scenario: You’re an average Jane or Joe that’s up on all the latest gadgetry but you’re just not a lexicon for recipes. So you go to the grocery store with your iPod Touch in hand. You’re listening away to some shopping tunes when you realize you have no idea what you’re looking for or why you even came to the store. All you really know is that you’re hungry and the road to satiation is a long and confusing one. Enter startcooking.com, a cooking website geared towards the portable wireless media market. The website features cooking tips and techniques, as well as video clips and recipes, all designed with cellphone and iPod surfing in mind.

The site comes courtesy of Kathy Maister, a former home-ec teacher from Boston. Realizing the potential of the handheld market, Maister sought to make a mobile cooking site a reality. She had to look no further than her husband, David Maister and the people who created his own site, a web design team by the name of StressLimitDesign. Working together they were able to establish a successful cooking repository that boasts over two hundred thousand visitors each month. Aside from cooking tips and recipes, startcooking.com offers a free subscription to the site’s videoblog. Available through iTunes, the videoblog has a back catalogue of over 40 recipes.

So next time you’re at the grocery store with your gadgets and without your shopping list, consider the tech-savy solution of the wireless cookbook that is startcooking.com

SteakHouse Grill

Have you ever wanted to cook a steak but for whatever reason the barbeque is off-limits? Maybe it’s out of propane or perhaps it’s the middle of winter and buried in two feet of snow? Or may you just plain don’t have one and even if you did you don’t have the room for it. What if I told you there was a way to grill a steak indoors that actually cooked faster and actually reduced the fat content? It’s real and it’s called the SteakHouse Grill. Using a patented adjustable internal grill made of stainless steel, you can now easily and safely cook a steak right in your own kitchen.

The Grill itself is of a vertical design, with electric grills that press against either side of the steak. This design allows the fat to drip down into a tray at the base of the unit, effectively containing the drippings and removing the fat from the steak. Also, with the fat contained at the bottom of the grill, away from the heating elements, there’s no need to worry about the smell of burning fat or the smoke associated with it. With a grill on either side this means that the cooking time is cut in half, as both sides of the steak are simultaneously cooked. The steak itself is held in place via internal springs that adjust to the thickness of the meat, from 3cm to half a centimetre.

Hot Cold Serving Tray

If you have ever tried to keep a cold dish cold or a warm dish warm after you have taken great pains to fix it, then you know all too well how very difficult that can be. Not any more. It is no longer necessary to cram ice around the dish or try to find a plug in for the burdensome and annoying cord to your warmer. No more cluttered and messy food set ups, thanks to the new revolutionary Hot/Cold Serving Tray.

This new kitchen gadget keeps foods either hot or cold thanks to the thermo sensitive oil that can be found inside of the tray, which is stainless steel. This oil is the key to its success in keep the food at the right temperature.

In order to warm the tray, you will need to place it in an oven set between 375 and 400 degrees and let it warm for about five or six minutes. This will warm the tray so that it will keep the food that is placed on it warm for several hours.

In order to cool the tray enough so that it will be able to keep food cold, you simply need to place it in the refrigerator for an hour or two. This will cool the tray enough that it will keep the food placed in it cold for several hours.

The stainless steel design not only helps to contain the thermo sensitive oils and makes the tray very durable, but it also makes for an easy clean up.

This tray is approximately twelve inches in diameter and can be purchase for around thirty dollars. In the long run this will probably save you money since you will no longer be buying all that ice to keep your food cold or using electric to keep your food warm. It’s the perfect gadget for anyone that prepares food from the avid cook to the “home room mom”. It makes transporting food and keeping it the right temperature a cinch.

Slip-In Cup Holder

If you are like me, the only thing you hate worse than doing dishes is having to put them all away. My main source of sheer dread comes, and this is mostly because I have way more dishes than I do space in my cabinets, which leads to the major source of frustration on my part, when the dishes aren’t “stacking” as easily as I wish they would. And besides, my dishes always seem to look messy and cluttered no matter how much time I take to stack them up because there is just not enough room. I thought the only real solution to my problem was to get rid of some of my dishes. But I just could not bring myself to do that. Besides, you never know when you will need an extra cup, right?

Then, I found a better solution than tossing out perfectly good dishes. I found the “Slip-In Cup Holder”! I couldn’t believe it. It was the perfect solution for my predicament and I presume it would help many other people in my situation as well.