Category — Books, Guides & Kits

Have a hankerin’ for milk and Pepsi but hate Pepsi? Well, if you’ve been suffering through the ultra sweet taste of that suspect combination just to get bubbles in milk, it’s time to let science lead you to better living. The U-FIZZ Drink Carbonation Kit consists of little more than a couple of plastic tubes and a hose (luckily with a $6.99 price tag to match—good job ThinkGeek), but manages to turn any beverage into a bubbling fountain of nose-tickling goodness. Whether it be juice, coffee, tea or the aforementioned milk, your favorite beverage can now be made better. How? Science. By using baking soda and vinegar to produce carbon dioxide, the gadget captures the escaping gas and puts it into your drink. Better living through chemistry, indeed.

There’s a new breed of pizza-maker out there: one that appreciates the tradition and culture of pizza. Like what microbrewing did for beer drinking, artisan pizza-makers are doing for the classic pie. Restaurants are popping up dedicated to the craft of pizza-making, and the results show in a quality menu. However, for all this attention heaped upon dough, sauce and cheese, the average slice still lacks soul. To be able to partake in this new pizza culture requires a commitment of an entire pie; sometimes I just want to go down to the corner and grab a slice.

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This is the chemistry set of today. Those semi-dangerous labs-in-a-box are a thing of the past. Nowadays, they aren’t going to pack anything remotely dangerous into those learning kits, so you might as well look elsewhere for real fun. Since Junior no longer has the capability to produce searing acid baths for his action figures, the modern chemistry set might as well produce something useful: food!

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There is no end to the amount of culinary information available on the Internet. However, if you don’t keep your laptop in the kitchen, chances are it does little good. Sure you could print out content (gasp!) and follow along, but that doesn’t help much when it comes to video tutorials.

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As far as gingerbread houses go, Halloween seems like the perfect holiday for them. Candy flows freely during this time of year, a happenstance that offers mounds of sugary treats just waiting to be converted into building supplies. Alas, the fat man in the red suit has usurped this logical practice, turning gingerbread houses everywhere into gumdrop-adorned travesties of tradition. Well, no longer!

The Fox Run Halloween Gingerbread Haunted House Kit offers the ability for kids of all ages to decorate a gingerbread house the way it was meant to be. Plastic pumpkins and pillowcases full of chocolate treats finally have a place to end up aside from turning into a melted glob of goo found under the mattress months down the road. Perhaps most importantly, this gingerbread house finally supplies a place to put all that horrible candy corn. Comes with seven cookie cutters, a cardboard base and an icing set for decorating.

I want to want this cookbook, I really do. With 90 million cans of SPAM sold each year in the United States, there has to be something to the canned meat. After watching Anthony Bourdain explore the possibilities lurking in the ubiquitous blue can in Hawaii, I should get this cookbook. However, Hawaii being populated with SPAM fanatics, I still have to approach the mystery meat with caution. Oh, I trust Hormel has done a fine job in canning the substance, and Marguerite Patten has done a fine job of writing about it, but SPAM The Cookbook will just have to wait.

Then again, I should do something with the can that’s been reposing in my pantry since I picked it up on sale at Walgreens. Maybe I’ll just take a little peek inside…