ottawa foodies

I got this wireless thermometer (but in red) from Oregon Scientific:
www.oregonscientificstore.com

Tried it out last night with a prime rib and it worked wonderfully well. Range is up to 100m so once the beast was in the oven, I sat in the lazboy with a bourbon until it told me the meat was done. No need to get up and run to the kitchen to check the temp. I set the temp for rare, which the guide says is 135F. I generally take it out at 120f and will override the "rare" setting in future as it turned out to be medium rare at that setting. But there is something very satisfying about sitting and relaxing while a little monitor next to me shows me that the roast temperature is slowly creeping up.

Any other cool foodie gadgets this year?

I got a B&D spice grinder. Had one on my list of to have items for awhile, I also received a IOU for a food scale I'm to pick out. That remote thermometer is really neat. I didn't know they could be had for that price range. The dream is having one with a iphone/android app. :) lol.

whiskey stones. they're used in place of ice to avoid diluting your scotch. i see they sell them at Chapters so i suspect this was a hot foodie gift this year.

www.teroforma.com

another favourite is the tapenades i received which are produced by a little outfit in SW Ontario called 'Cook's Gourmet'. the Peperonata flavour is outstanding! reminds me of Tallarico's Hoagie Spread. great in a panino.

www.cooksgourmet.com

I also received the popular whiskey stones this year. They're chilling in my freezer right now...

The big luxury this time around was the Espro calibrated espresso tamper (similar to what is pictured here). It "clicks" when you exert 30 lbs of pressure on it, to ensure a consistent tamping force and removing one more variable from your espresso pulling procedure. Nifty!

I'm sure that a lot of people got Whiskey Rocks this year. I sure sold enough of them! They were fun to make and a really good seller, even though I only had them for one show. Thanks to everyone who bought some or got some.

p.s. I still have more ...

Haha.. I was commenting to my wife what genius marketing the whisky rocks are. Cutting slabs of soapstone into cubes and then tumbling them for a bit to round them out is not very labour intensive and the raw materials are relatively cheap. It's almost like printing money!

The genius is that they're perfectly priced as gifts and it isn't worth anyone's time to make 9 of these as a one-off activity. Win-win all around. :-)

Haha...you haven't met my wife, Fresh Foodie - I showed her Monty's pic and her mind leaped into action, thinking about next year's Xmas presents and about some soapstone pieces she has somewhere, leftover from making inukshuks for presents in years past - she also had kids at school making them. I don't think she'll have the kids making whiskey rocks! Now I wonder how much we'd like them with a glass of whiskey after drinking watered down whiskeys - well I'll just have to give 'er a shot! Cheers, and thanks Monty!

We got a FoodSaver! Infused sous vide everything is in our future.

Or at least there would be if we had an immersion circulator. For now I like the idea of infusing veggies with flavours and stuff.

Couple of Wusthof Knives were the highlight

8" Cook's Knife and 6" Santoku

I got a granite rolling pin, beautiful.
Some baking sheets, a mandoline, and some glass cooking dishes.

Fresh Foodie, we have an Espro tamper and it's great. Perfect espresso every time!

I got cash to buy a new knife set... I'm leaning heavily toward the Thiers-Issard Sabatier knives. Beeeeeautiful.

I was very lucky to get a kegerator. My favorite craft beers now on tap in my living room - this won't be bad..

I remember seeing a page on Instructables or someplace where someone had made a coffee tamper out of an old orange press, but it had a hydraulic gauge on it to measure the pressure you had put on it so you could practice doing it properly. Of course, I can't find that page now, even though I bought an old orange press for the purpose of building one just like it.

@ Rizak: Was this it: makeprojects.com

Also, I am the new owner of a mandoline. Now I might finally make a ratatouille.

Absolutely! Thanks. I should have known it was MAKE and not Instructables. Isn't that the coolest thing you've ever seen?

this is my newest toy :)

www.molecule-r.com

Did you get the Molecule R from Groupon?

they had a 1/2 price deal before chrismas!
It looks interesting, but I can get most ingredients and just wanted the recipies...so did not buy.

Bulk barn sells most of the molecular ingredients-not the popping sugar though.
they have a lot of the recipies on the Molecule website...so I will print them out.