In case you haven't noticed, we love gadgets around here. In fact, our list of our favorite kitchen gear quickly became far too long for a single article, so we're splitting it in half. We present to you our favorite Kitchen Gadgets, and stay tuned in the near future for our favorite Cooking Gear. As always, we can't wait for you to post links to your own favorites in the comments section.
    
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Who doesn't love a good bargain? Getting a good deal always feels great, and there are some things you can almost always get at a discount. Here are 10 things you can avoid ever paying full price for.
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Android and iOS: While you generally don't want to turn to the internet for help fixing your body, if you can connect with an actual doctor you can get usable advice. Talk to Docs offer just that, allowing you to ask a question aloud and receive an answer just moments later.
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Browser wars are nothing new. These days, the two titans of the browsing world are Firefox and Chrome, both great browsers to be sure. But we want to hear your opinion. And make it count, because we'll be posting a follow-up article next week with the best arguments on both sides.
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Hopefully you don't take out a giant block of cheese and eat the entire thing. If you put some back in the refrigerator when finished, you have a cut area that gets dry and mostly inedible next time you want a cheese snack. According to BuzzFeed, you can prevent this problem with a dab of butter.
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It's pretty common knowledge that you're going to get the most nutritional bang for your buck from fresh vegetables and fruits, but AsapSCIENCE explores why that's the case, and how true that idea really is.
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If you want an alternative to the big carriers, you do have some options. Pre-paid carriers, MVNOs, and other companies that ride the same towers but have their own phones, customer service, and pricing plans can give you valuable choices. This week we want to know which ones you think are the best.
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Tea isn't just a comforting and pleasant beverage, it also has remarkable healing properties—so much so that it's deemed a sort of "wonder drink" that may be even healthier than drinking water. Here are all the ways drinking tea can lead to a healthier, longer life—and how to maximize both the enjoyment of the drink and its health benefits.
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Being able to cook at home isn't that hard—all you have to do is follow the recipe. Unfortunately, when the recipe is full of a bunch of confusing terms that are alien to us beginners, things get more difficult. If the difference between chopped, diced, and minced is nothing but a few letters to you, let's demystify those (and many other) terms.
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If you're short on space for your DIY projects, this magnetic tool rack gives you a place to store small hand tools and other light metal objects where they won't get lost, but are readily available while you're working. All you need is some metal and some magnets.
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Remember when flatbed scanners took up tons of desk space and had to be connected to a computer? Not anymore: The Doxie Flip is a portable scanner that's just right for photos, receipts, written notes, and anything else you'd like to digitize. Best of all, you don't even need to connect it to a computer to use.
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Why have two measuring cups when you just need one? The 2-in-1 Measuring Jug manages to handle both small and large amounts in one kitchen device so you don't have to dirty (or own) multiple.
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Lots of fruits and vegetables emit ethylene gas, and this can shorten the life of produce that absorbs it. You can avoid the problem somewhat by storing them separately, but an inexpensive ethylene gas absorber can extend the life of your fruits and veggies without the trouble.
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Households that have one “breadwinner” and one “homemaker” certainly still exist, but they are becoming increasingly rare. Between 1996 and 2006, the number of dual-income families in America increased 31%, according to the Department of Labor. In fact, among families with children, 59% have two working parents, 2012 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. In other words, two adults bringing home the bacon is the new norm.
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Whether you need to know the part of the cow the brisket comes from, how many grams are in an ounce, how long to steam an artichoke, or how long fish keeps in the freezer, this graphic can tell you. Dubbed the "ultimate kitchen cheat sheet," it's packed with conversions, butcher's charts, food safety info, and more.
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We often think of go bags in terms of ourselves, but they make great gifts for other people as well. Reader Wendy Cooper received one well-suited for travel as an anniversary gift, filled with things she likes and needs.
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While not infinitely reusable, you don't have to toss your decorated pumpkins in the garbage just because Halloween has come to an end. Aha! Modern Living notes that you can use them to cool your drinks first.
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You’d think that most parents would be applauded for not giving in to their kids’ demands for fast food, but a court-appointed psychologist in New York City (New York City?!?) has reportedly decided that one father is an unfit parent because he failed to feed his 5-year-old son’s craving for McDonald’s.
According to the NY Post, the youngster recently threw a tantrum when pops decided to take him to dinner at a restaurant instead of the Golden Arches.
He claims that he doesn’t normally deny his kid’s fast food requests, but decided at the time that the boy had been eating too much of it. Also, after the child threw a tantrum, he says he did not want to reward his son’s bad behavior by giving into the McDonald’s demand.
And so he says he gave the child the option of dinner anywhere but McDonald’s or no dinner at all. The kid chose the no-dinner route.
When news of the incident got back to the man’s ex-wife, with whom he is involved in a custody battle, that’s when things apparently got really hairy.
The dad says that his ex contacted the court-appointed psychologist in their custody case and reported the to-do over the McDonald’s demands, and that the doctor only interviewed the mom and the boy before determining that the father should lose weekend visitation rights because he was “wholly incapable of taking care of his son.”
If taking your kid for fast food is a hallmark of good parenting, then my otherwise neglectful dad would have won Father of the Year for most of the ’80s.
Today the Internet revealed a recipe from a bygone era, one where combining fruit, meat, cheese and mustard got people drooling and set stomachs to rumbling. But since reading the instructions on how to concoct your own Ham Banana Rolls is having the opposite effect on my innards (translation: guts are coiling back up into themselves) we’ve got to wonder if any of you brave souls would like to take this recipe on.
In the old advertisement/handy recipe offered by the United Fruit Company, Chiquita Bananas get a makeover that we can only surmise reflected the popular tastes of the time. Either that or the creators flipped through a book of foods, chose four at random and just kinda went with it.
Gird your stomachs, folks.
If you can’t read the recipe, we’ve copied it below for your culinary pleasure. And please, if anyone is brave enough to create and eat this terrifying banana concoction, send us a line and a photo of the evidence at tips@consumerist.com.
How to make “Ham Banana Rolls”
6 thin slices boiled ham
Prepared mustard (it must be ready to do what it’s about to do to those bananas)
6 firm bananas, peeled
Cheese Sauce
Spread each slice of ham lightly with mustard. Wrap a slice of the prepared ham around each banana. Place in a buttered shallow baking dish and pour Cheese Sauce over bananas. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees Fahrenheit) 30 minutes or until bananas are tender… easily pierced with a fork. Six servings. Serve with Cheese Sauce from the baking dish poured over each roll.
How to make a CHEESE SAUCE (because ham, bananas and mustard isn’t a gross enough combination on its own)
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated American cheese (How do you grate American cheese? Shudder).
Melt butter, add flour and stir until smooth. Stir in milk slowly. Add cheese and cook, stirring constantly until sauce is smooth and thickened. Makes about 1 cup sauce.
Then go ahead and douse those bananas in cheese, folks! It had to have made sense to someone, sometime. We’re just not sure who this person with a stomach of steel was or what he or she was trying to accomplish.
Fairfax County authorities want to remind everyone that it's deer breeding season, meaning there will be more deer on the roads. 
Virginia is home to a number of vineyards and wineries, and its own Governor's Cup awards, honoring the year's top wine's and winemakers.
Fans of "Mexican Coke" in the U.S. need not worry about any sweetener changes. 
MacKenzie Bezos posted a one-star review on the Amazon page for Brad Stone's "The Everything Store"
The Smithsonian's National Zoo is asking the public to help name its female giant panda cub.
How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown?
Nick Nelson
According to the Turfgrass Extension and Outreach program at UIUC,[1]The Morrow cornfields operated by the university are the most valuable cornfields in the world, and part of one of the world's longest-running scientific experiments. every mowing should remove one third of the grass blade's height.
Grass grows slower or faster depending on the weather, but we'll assume an average growth rate of 0.2 inches per day. This figure comes from Mowing Your Lawn, a document published by by Iowa State's Yard and Garden Extension program (which, I like to imagine, has a vicious and occasionally bloody rivalry with the UIUC Turfgrass crew).
A typical pushmower at a fast walking speed can mow a little under a square meter per second. If you mowed without stopping from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, you would cover about 25,000 square meters.[2]or 6 acres, or 2.5 hectares, or 7,500 square fathoms, or 8,500 square smoots, or 5,300 Shrouds of Turin To maintain your lawn at a height of four inches, you would need to mow it every ten days. If you mowed more or less frequently, you could risk damaging the lawn—or, worse, incur the wrath of UIUC.
At ten hours of mowing per day, you could cover a quarter of a square kilometer before you'd have to circle back to the beginning and start over. If the entire area of Vatican City, indoors and out, were covered in perennial ryegrass,[3]Perhaps due to an ill-advised UIUC undergraduate project you would be able to keep about half of it neatly trimmed.
You could improve on this with a larger, faster mower. An oversized rider mower at 12 miles per hour[4]The maximum listed in the Cub Cadet rider mower acres-per-hour chart could mow as much as two square kilometers, which Wolfram|Alpha helpfully tells me is 0.5% to 1% of an adult male cougar's home range.
In 2010, Bobby Cleveland set a world record for the top speed in a riding lawnmower, hitting 96 mph. This record was set as part of a rivalry with the British lawnmower driver Don Wales.[5]Really.
In a blow to its national pride, the US has lost that record. Sometime in the last few years, the magazine Top Gear commissioned Honda to build them an even faster lawnmower. A few months ago, this mower—which shoots flames from the exhaust pipe—broke 100 mph on a test track in France.[6]"First tests of '130mph' lawnmower", BBC News Technology, 17 July 2013 The builders claim it will eventually reach 130 mph. The mower is still capable of cutting grass (using a custom wire mechanism), but when running at top speed the trimmer is removed for safety reasons.
With the Top Gear mower, what's the maximum area we could cut?
Let's set safety aside and assume we can leave the mower's cutting mechanism in place. Let's also assume that the mower can cut a strip two meters wide while running at top speed.
Under those assumptions, if the mower is run for 24 hours a day, seven days a week ...
... it could just about keep one adult male cougar's home range neatly trimmed.
![Prediction for Carlsen v. Anand: ... 25. Qb8+ Nxb8 26. Rd8# f6 27. "... dude." Qf5 28. "The game is over, dude." Qxg5 29. Rxe8 0-1 30. "Dude, your move can't be '0-1'. Don't write that down." [Black flips board]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/puzzle.png "Prediction for Carlsen v. Anand: ... 25. Qb8+ Nxb8 26. Rd8# f6 27. \"... dude.\" Qf5 28. \"The game is over, dude.\" Qxg5 29. Rxe8 0-1 30. \"Dude, your move can't be '0-1'. Don't write that down.\" [Black flips board]")