No one ever wants to make the mistake of drinking sour milk.  Personally I’m so careful about it that I’ve probably dumped perfectly good milk down the drain before.  It’s usually because I’ve noticed that the milk is right within that gray area and rather than risk it, I get rid of it.  This would be great for anyone that wants to be sure just where they stand when it comes to the freshness of their milk.  It’d also save a whole lot of good milk from being sent down the drain.

According to UK milk-merchant Cravendale, over 300,000 tonnes (364,000 tons) of milk are tossed out every year because people cannot tell whether it is sour or not. A new milk jug tests the white stuff for you and gives a readout on its LCD display: “fresh” or “sour”.

The jug is simple. As milk sours, it becomes more acidic. A sensor in the bottom of the jug detects the drop in pH and sounds the alarm. This gives people a reliable measure of the milk’s freshness, and will supposedly stop so much milk being poured down the sink every year. The blog post, from Cravendale’s site, is thinly veiled publicity, but offers some interesting tidbits about milk. For instance, Cravendale’s own brand is filtered as well as pasteurized for a truly mind-boggling 21 days of (unopened) freshness.

Then again, milk is scary stuff anyway. If you’re happy to drink the fatty white liquid secreted by lactating mammals, then you’ll probably be happy to suck down anything. Seriously, if God had meant us to drink milk, he wouldn’t have invented cheese. For those still stuck at the cow’s udder, though, this resource-saving jug is just the thing.

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Having made a few cherry pies in our day with pit removal being a pain, it’s nice to find this pit remover from Oxo. The Splatter Shield protects your work area from juices and removes for cleaning. The sturdy, die-cast zinc construction removes pits with ease by pushing the pit right out the bottom. The generous cherry holder accommodates large cherries like Bing and Rainier, and is recessed to secure smaller varieties. And if you’re worried about having this in the kitchen with kids – it locks closed for convenient storage and safety.

Get Your Oxo Good Grips Cherry Pitter

Toasters are probably the most riffed-upon kitchen appliance.  The fact that they are comparatively easy to manufacture probably has something to do with it, but iteration after iteration of the device can also be attributed to their iconic status. Toasters may have come a long way since the early days, but the basic size and shape is still in production models today. Even when they go digital.

The Digital Toaster (two-slice) by T-Fal trades in the shiny chrome of its predecessors for a sleek black finish. The darker background allows for smooth lines and a clean transition to the decidedly modern feature of this toaster: an integrated LCD display panel. Counting down the remaining time during toasting, the panel is functional as well as being a design highlight.

Though toaster design is constantly in flux, features that are deemed worthy become standard. This toaster Darwinism has given rise to many useful functions that you now expect to see in any modern toaster, such as the bagel function, a defrost setting, and a variable browning control, to name a few. The most outstanding feature is, of course, the digital countdown timer that fits right in with a modern kitchen–especially since it can show that uppity microwave oven, with its fancy timer, who the original king of the kitchen is.

Features:

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If there is one thing that I cannot stand, it is pickle jars. Generally, the lids are so tight and the base is so wide that they are almost impossible to open.

However, if I had myself one of these Lids Off Jar Opener things from Black and Decker, then I would probably never have to worry about that again.

All the user has to do is just put the jar underneath, and it has an adjustable height for all sizes of jars. It also looks like the jar gets grabbed from below, and the lid is somehow captured from atop. It then looks like both grabbed areas will twist with one push of a button, and the jar will come open.

The Lids Off Jar Opener looks like something that practically every home could use. To make it even better, it is completely collapsible.

I don’t know about you, but the initial base of this guy looks a tad skinny for doing pickle jars. I guess I’m going to have to go back to my tried and true method of smacking around the rim with a blunt object, like the kitchen counter.

Still, something tells me that I’m going to need one of these devices when I am a senior citizen with aching joints. Considering that this is only $27, maybe I should get one now.

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Have you ever been in a party where every glass was the same, and you didn’t know which was yours? What’s really sick is when you take a sip, and discover that it is definitely not your drink.

Now imagine that you had these Cipher Drinking Glasses designed by Damjan Stankovic. See all those random colored squares on the glasses? Apparently, they have some odd ability to make certain words depending on what the liquid is in the glass. Depending on what squares appear, that will show what is in them.

It’s like those glasses back in the eighties that had the muscular men or buxom babes with the outfits that would disappear if there was liquid in the glass. I suppose that this is some sort of sensors in order to spell out what is in the cup.

You will note that it knows that one is “Coca-Cola” as opposed to “Pepsi”. Those would have to be some interesting sensors, and I wonder if they could detect a virgin drink from an alcoholic beverage. I mean, there must be thousands of possible drinking combinations, and I’m just not certain that this one glass could really do them all.

Unfortunately, this is still a concept device, so I doubt you’ll be seeing these glasses at a party anytime soon.

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Take a look at this dishwasher. It certainly is better looking than any dishwasher that I have seen in any house, as it has a beautiful transparent aesthetic quality about it. Yet there is more to this dishwasher than just its looks. In fact, if the Siemens Zeolith dishwasher was the ugliest in the world, I would still want it.

The Zeolith has a design that allows it to recycle the energy of humidity left over from the wash cycle, and it does it with zeolites. What are zeolites? Special moisture absorbing materials that can release stored up heat, not to mention absorbing moisture from the air inside the machine.

So after they absorb the moisture of the air, the three pounds of zeolites in the Zeolith can release that heat into the wash water, which will result in a faster load cycle. All in all, this saves energy, which is very much needed. Because if there is one thing that dishwashers are good at, and shouldn’t be good at, it is raising power bills.

The Seimens Zeolith is “widely available in Europe”, but I don’t think that there is any place to purchase it in the United States. For some reason, my source does not have a price.

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The Morphy Richards Intellisteam features a backlit blue LCD allowing you to control three separate steaming pods, each with their own steam controls. The Morphy Richards Intellisteam comes loaded with a ton of presets that make steaming various different foods simple. It also features a visible water gauge, auto-off when water runs out and up to 40 minutes of food warming.

What’s amazing about the different compartments is that they allow you to make a meal for up to 4 people. We can imagine doing exactly above – some potatoes, rice, and a nice piece of salmon in the Intellisteam.

Steak Station can monitor four steaks at the same time, allowing those commanding the grill to confidently cook multiple steaks each to the desired degree of doneness (we’ll take medium rare please). A monitor allows for quick and easy evaluation of how much a steak has been cooked. The colorful Steak Station probes measure from 115°F to 170°F, indicating a complete spectrum of doneness and helping you remember whose steak is whose. Steak Station can also be used in the oven as a regular meat thermometer to monitor meats throughout the cooking process, and it’s only going to set you back $29.99 when it’s released later this year.

I believe there is some sort of made-up word for when you go to get a snack from the refrigerator, and you can’t find anything. However, you still go back to it, as if something will materialize.

Of course, you realize that it costs precious energy and money to stand in front of an open refrigerator door. So why not make it transparent?

This conceptional refrigerator by designer Yoon jung Kim and Jong rok Lee has some special glass in it that is normally opaque. However, if you run a current through it, it will turn transparent.

I’m not at all certain if this will work, as I have never seen glass like that before. I’m not doubting that this could work, but if we have glass that can go from transparent to opaque, then we really need to use it on more than just refrigerators.

In addition to that glass trick, this Window Fridge has another outstanding and unique feature: sections. That’s right, this refrigerator doesn’t just have one or two doors, but many. So if you want to categorize your foods, and sort them by the five compartment doors, then you can.

Well, there is no word when this fridge is going to be actually made. Perhaps the designers need to perfect this glass going transparent or opaque thing.

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The Demy is a recipe reader and digital library which comes with a touchscreen, splash resistant casing, built-in timers and converters and access to an online recipe archive of over 100,000 dishes. Priced at around $299.95, you add your recipes using an online web site, or adding recipes other demy users have submitted.

• Kitchen-safe touchscreen recipe reader that holds your personal recipe collection in one compact device
• 7-inch touchscreen with an intuitive graphical navigation interface, adjustable font size
• Comes pre-loaded with 250 recipes; can store up to 2500 recipes
• Accesses recipes saved to Key Ingredient web site; syncs via included USB cable conneced to PC Splash-resistant design and sturdy plastic exterior can be cleaned with damp cloth
• The Demy is powered by keyingredient.com, a site for you to find, create, share and collect your recipes. Membership is free and getting started is easy. Once you have a keyingredient.com account, you can use recipes from the Key Ingredient site or use your own recipes by typing them in or by sending your hard copy recipes to be transcribed for you using scanmyrecipes.com.

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