Condiment Gun

12 years ago I bought a Vietnamese pour over on the streets of Saigon for 12 cents. Since then a lot has changed in the quality and consumption of coffee in our over caffeinated, craft-focused country. Dustin Sell has spent years perfecting the perfect coffee maker in order to preserve that quality and enhance the consumption experience. He’s so dedicated that he scrapped his first crowdfunding effort because it just wasn’t “right”. Now he’s back with a perfected version that makes the perfect cup of coffee and looks great on your counter top while it pours it’s deep, rich, sweet, bitter, chocolatey, earthy, mellow, nutty, spicy, sweet, bright, sharp, magic.

Ever since I can remember I have been staining myself. My mother has always been quick to point this out. Thanks Ma. From the grass stained knees on my school clothes to the red Italian gravy stain on my confirmation tie to the brown coffee stain on the cuff of my new, white dress shirt, she catches them all. Hello, Lid Bib. Technically a reshaped paper towel with a strategically placed hole in it. The Lid Bib is not the most low profile solution to a drippy coffee cup but, based on the number of used Starbuck’s napkins I find in my coat pocket, an effective one.

You may think that here at FTHQ, we’re partial to utensils of the four-pronged variety, but we generally appreciate any and all cutlery that helps us deliver food into our perpetually hungry mouths. And although we’ve been known to nearly jump up-and-down in excitement about all kinds of eating instruments — knives, salad tongs, corn-on-the-cob holders, you name it — it’s been a while since tableware has gotten us as excited as these 100% edible and biodegradable utensils from Bakeys. With funding from a successful Kickstarter campaign and an aim to provide a viable alternative to the billions of plastic utensils thrown into landfills every year, Bakeys Edible Cutlery has it covered when it comes to usability and sustainability. Turns out sorghum, an environmentally-friendly crop you may have never heard of, seems to be the magic ingredient. Not only does sorghum allow Bakeys to produce 100 edible spoons with the same energy required to make a single plastic one, it also prevents the utensils from degrading in liquids — a particularly important fact for the environmentally-conscious ice cream enthusiasts among us.

The Mellow sous vide machine is aiming to do what the microwave did for home kitchens in 1967. Although, in 2016, there’s a whole different science and aesthetic at play. As a big fan of temperature fixed circulated water machines Mellow is the Cadillac of the recent immersion circulators boom. The upgrade, Mellow keeps your vacuum sealed dinner chilled by enabling the machine to hold the water at both cold and hot temperatures. A couple hours before your dinner time, Mellow heats up and finishes your meal. The beauty of Mellow even makes this minimalistic, bare kitchen counter kid contemplate an artistic and functional residency in my apartment. Let’s not forget, anything sous vide tastes amazing.