Gift Guide: Five Kitchen Gadgets Your Foodie Will Eat Right Up

More food is consumed during the holiday season than at any other time. But that's the thing with food; you can't stay full forever. And so these gadgets, services and tools should serve your food-friendly loved ones quite handily. We'll cover a range of products, including an ingredient-delivery service, a magical scale that measures the nutrition of your food, and one very special ice cube.

Everyone from a master chef to a home cook should have a blast with this gift guide, so let's waste no more time and crack some eggs.

Prep Pad from The Orange Chef ($150)

If you know or love a health nut, the Prep Pad is an easy, thoughtful gift. It's a Bluetooth-equipped scale that measures the weight of your food as well as its nutritional value, which is then relayed to the user through an app. Simply input the type of food you're weighing, or scan the barcode, and see a pie chart of the nutrition you'll be consuming.

With an aluminum frame and a paper composite surface, which can be hygienically wiped down, the Prep Pad can handle any mess in any kitchen, and is accurate with the weight measurement to boot. It's got a heavy little price tag attached, at $150, and it doesn't ship until February, but it is worth the wait (ha!) and the cash for a chef obsessed with health.

You can pick up the Orange Chef Prep Pad here.

Impress Coffee Brewer ($39.95)

Budding caffeine addicts are just one gadget away from a full-blown addiction. Meet the Impress single-cup Coffee Brewer from Gamila.

Single-cup coffee makers are becoming more popular, but those machines cost a pretty penny and take up a lot of space in the kitchen. But what if you could combine the single cup coffee maker with French press coffee-making techniques and a thermos to transport the coffee in? That would be pretty amazing, right?

Well, that's the Impress. It's kind of a pain to clean, as you need to scoop out the grounds and such, but it manages to keep 14 ounces of coffee warm for hours.

Pick one up here.

Plated ($15/plate)

Grocery shopping, to some, is the worst part of cooking. Plated takes the guess work and leg work out of grocery shopping and cooking a nice meal. After a visit to the Plated website, you can shop around between various meals, ranging from things like Garlic-Herb Pork Chops with Roasted Sweet Potato Mash, Korean-Style Short Ribs with Asian Slaw and Sushi Rice, or vegetarian classics like Autumn Root Vegetable Chili with Cornbread Croutons.

Users are given everything they need, including ingredients and directions (but not cookware), to make an excellent meal and a fun experience. For $10/month, you can buy a membership that brings the price of a meal down to $12/plate, with a minimum of four plates per week. Otherwise meals are $15/plate with a minimum of four plates in one week.

Pucs ($19 for 3)

This is a design project that first blew up on Kickstarter and is now available for purchase in a number of different packages.

Anyone who enjoys a nice glass of whiskey on the rocks or simply hates a watered down drink should enjoy these stainless steel ice cubes. They stay at the bottom of the glass and hold temperature pretty well without watering down the drink. They even come with a handsome case you can slip into the freezer.

They're also able to bring down the temperature of hot beverages more quickly, and then be removed. They're a nice conversation starter to have around the house, and come at a reasonable price. Worth considering for a boss.

Egg Minder

The Egg Minder is a product out of Quirky and GE that brings a little intelligence to the dairy section of your fridge. Bad eggs are the worst, and the Egg Minder aims to make sure you never experience them again. The smart tray indicates which egg in the tray is the oldest via LED lights, while a wireless connection to your smartphone keeps you in the loop on expiration dates. If you're running low, you'll get a push notification. Even better, you can check how many eggs you have and when they go bad from the grocery store.

The Egg Minder costs $69.99 and is available now.

You can check out our complete Holiday Gift Guide 2013 right here.

Swedes petition to alter dictionary definition of ‘nerd’

10 or 15 years ago, when the world of comic books and video games was relegated to a small fraction of the population, being labeled a “nerd” was a social stigma like no other. These days, though, it is almost regarded as a compliment. Nerds are now considered smart and destined for greatness in a job market that prizes technological prowess.

As a result, is an outdated definition of the word “nerd” (that’s “n rd” in Swedish) really appropriate these days? At least one group of Swedish nerds doesn’t think so. Thousands of Swedes have signed a petition to alter the definition of the word in the Svenska Akademiens Ordlista (SAOL), the official dictionary of the Swedish Academy.

Currently it defines the word as a “simple-minded laughable person.” By all accounts, that is simply not what the word is used to describe in the 2010s. Ludwig Jonsson was the man who started the petition, telling a local newspaper that being a nerd is something you should be proud of.

The nearly four thousand people that have signed the petition have offered up alternate definitions of the word, all of which paint it in a much better light. The wording of the petition claims that nerds are people with “enormous drive,” and points out that there can be many different kinds of nerds — gaming nerds, word nerds, etc.

SAOL editor Sven-Goran Malmgren noted that the definition of the word was created seven years ago, and admitted the meaning could have changed in that time. He relinquished that the next edition of the dictionary could potentially have an altered definition.

via Digital Spy