I'm on the computer waaayy too much, and my wrists are seriously weak as a result. So what's a girl who loves wine to do? I've experimented with plenty of wine openers trying to find one that won't kill my wrists, especially when I run into a bottle with a plastic cork, which is the worst closure anyone could have possibly invented. Please, wineries, just use a screwcap if you can't spring for the real thing. Those of us who don't have the arm strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days thank you.

Now I've found a wine opener that's easy on both my wrists and budget: the Penguin Corkscrew. It's kind of a Rabbit knockoff with a sleeker design, and at $50 it's a little spendy, but much preferable to carpel tunnel surgery. You just raise the lever, put the Penguin on the bottle, pull the lever down and then up, and voila, the cork is out in less than five seconds.

I used to work in a fancy restaurant in college where I had to open bottles perfectly with a waiter's corkscrew, but I'm glad those days are over. Now it's all Penguin, all the time. What's your favorite corkscrew, or do you just wish every bottle had a screwcap?

Yesterday, we wrote about the sad fact that after 92 years of production, those familiar pink and white frosted, animal-shaped cookies are going the way of the Hydrox (although since Hydrox cookies are now back, that might not be the most apt comparison). For those of you who have strong feelings of affection for your frosted Circus Animals, you can now get a tee-shirt honoring them.

You see, upon learning yesterday that the cookies were disappearing, Joshua at Cloth Moth decided to design a tee-shirt bearing their likeness, so that even when they vanish from shelves, they'll always be remembered. To sweeten the deal, for the first 20 orders, he's tossing in a complementary 10 ounce bag of the cookies on which the design is based (he ran out last night and cleaned out the store).

Growing up in the late eighties and early nineties, diet soda was The Thing. As pre-teens and then teenagers, we drank it like it was water, swapping cans of Diet Orange Crush and Diet Muggs Root Beer in an attempt to quench our sugar cravings and keep the weight off. In college, I drank it for the caffeine, when I couldn't stand another cup of mediocre cafeteria coffee.

After college, my soda habit slowly died off as I switched to water, tea and coffee (I've yet to kick that caffeine habit). I'd occasionally have a diet soda, but as the news reports about the dangers of artificial sweeteners flooded media outlets, I tried to stay away.

Virgil's the maker of micro-brewed root beer, cream soda and other classic soda combinations, has recently released a line of small batch Diet Real Cola that uses stevia as the sweetener in place of more common ones like Splenda or NutraSweet. Stevia is an herb that is native to Mexico and South and Central America. There has been some controversy over the safety of stevia, but unlike other sugar substitutes, it has never been found to cause cancer in test animals.

When I opened that first bottle of Virgil's Diet Real Cola, the first thing I noticed is that is doesn't have the metallic scent that comes with just about every other cola on the market. Instead, it smells sweet and a little spicy. As I tasted my initial sip, I noticed that it wasn't as aggressively sweet as traditional sodas. As I kept drinking, my taste buds adjusted and I started to really enjoy the flavor and fizziness of the soda. As I finished the bottle, I was already looking forward to the next.

For those of you who are attached to your Diet Coke, this soda is probably going to taste strange and unwelcome to you. However, I think that this flavor will really speak to the people who want to indulge in a bit of soda on occasion but who don't want all the sugar and caffeine. For you folks, I highly recommend it.

For the most part, I embrace technology. I use my iPod daily, am happily bound to my cell phone and spend between 10 and 12 hours a day pecking away at a computer keyboard. There are, however, a couple of places in my life where I haven't been able to surrender to the siren song of digitization. I still use a paper calender, as I like the ability to physically touch a representation of my days and scribble things in with pen and pencil.

I also keep all my recipes on paper. While I have cooked from my computer occasionally, waking up the screen with a dough-y finger to check quantities, I far prefer to hand write my recipes. Part of this attachment to paper comes from the fact that I don't have to worry if a bit of butter leaps out of the mixing bowl and the other part is due to the fact that I love cooking from the recipe cards that my grandmother and aunts originated. I think about my own future descendents and think that they'll also prefer to have a tangible representation of my time in the kitchen.

However, all that said, the sheer volume of recipes I've amassed over the years is beginning to make storage an issue and I've begun to play with the idea of recipe storage software as a way to finally get rid of the bursting file box in our second bedroom. Lucky for me, a new program (sadly for you PC users out there, it's for Macs only) has just recently hit the market that is sort of like iTunes for recipes, making the switch feel intuitive and inevitable. Called SousChef, it allows you to sort and search by name, ingredient and category. You can rate recipes and star your favorite. It makes it easy to scale batches up or down and offers an import feature so that you can pull recipes found on the internet straight into your database. All for $30. I am sorely tempted.

[via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

"Eat Beautiful. Feel Beautiful."

That's the message on the cover of Empanada Joe's new brochure. Empanada Joe's has two (and soon to be three) locations in New York City, and brings a traditional Mexican favorite to mainstream culture.

How mainstream? Well, you can get a Mediterranean Caprese empanada stuffed wth mozzerella, tomatoes, and basil. If that's any indication.

Unsnobbycoffee.com sounds like it might be something really good for your dad or uncle who still can't pronounce "grande" and thinks "frappuccino" is a made-up word (and to be fair, "frappuccino" is a made-up word, by Boston's The Coffee Connection chain which was bought by Starbucks).

Actually, unsnobbycoffee.com is the website for McDonalds' new ad campaign.

"McDonald's has made it simple and easy to get the delicious espresso drinks you crave. No crazy names or sizes. No second language required. So hang out and have some fun."

What? McDonald's wants to be a coffee house?

With the economy taking a nosedive the past few weeks (months? years?), plenty of wine drinkers are wondering whether they'll be able to afford their Bordeaux and Burgundy with retirement accounts shrinking and daily living more expensive than ever. Dr. Vino, a wine author and blogger, did a poll this week to find out if and how wine drinkers will cut back.

Not all winemakers are responding by dropping prices (a BBC news report says chocolate and Champagne have steady sales even in times of economic distress), but one company is embracing the socio-economic situation and turning lemons into lemonade (or, technically, grapes into wine). Recession Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon from California sell for around $5 a bottle. The company says they taste like $10 wines, explaining that the value comes from using lighter-weight glass bottles, saving on shipping costs, and using a recycled synthetic closure instead of cork, which costs $1 per bottle.

I tried the wines recently and really liked the Merlot, which was smoky on the nose, not too flabby like most cheap Merlot from California, and a little green peppery, like it had some Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend. The vegetal aspect could definitely fool you into thinking you're drinking a much more spendy wine. My husband and I rated what we thought the prices would be if we didn't know they were $5, and here's what we came up with: Chardonnay, $9; Merlot, $14; Cabernet Sauvignon, $6.

The wines are currently available all over New York and will roll out nationally soon--unless our lawmakers can get it together and save the economy.

I'll be back with the Slashfood Ate (8): Beer Edition later, but as soon as I saw this gizmo, I just had to drop everything to put you guys in the know...

Perpetual Kid is offering a USB Mini Fridge -- a single-serving can refrigerator that gets 100% of its power from your computer. Plug this fridge into any USB port and you'll be getting enough juice to keep your juice (or soda or -- my preference -- beer) at a respectably cool 45 degrees. How cool is that?!

Um, well, it's around 7 degrees Celsius... assuming your beverage is in a can or can-size cup, of course.

Though this product probably scores around a zero on the practicality scale, score it an 11 on the "must have gadget of all time if you don't want to see me crying on Christmas morning" scale!

[via Sybeeritic via BeerAdvocate Magazine]

For more than a year now, Starbucks has been working on improving their breakfast offerings. In spring of 2007, they launched a line of breakfast sandwiches, only to announce a year later that they were pulling them from the stores (they then changed their minds again, announcing that they were only going to retool the sandwiches). Earlier this summer, they started selling a line of whole grain pastries, cups of "perfect oatmeal" and a platter that lives in the refrigerated case that contains a hard boiled egg, a small whole wheat bagel, a few slices of cheese and some fruit.

This morning, they launched the latest addition to the breakfast line-up. Called the Piadini, this savory breakfast pastry comes in two varieties - Portobello Mushroom or Sausage, Egg and Cheddar. Energized by a Starbucks-led breakfast and coffee pairing event I attended last week, I stopped by my local Starbucks today to try out this new breakfast option.

Originally intended as a limited edition beer that would "only last for the duration of the Democratic primary hiatus," Hop Obama, much like the candidate who inspired it, is still around. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, I'm guessing we might see it for another four years.

Brooklyn's Sixpoint Craft Ales, brewers of Hop Obama, state "the delicious and refreshing quality it represents reminds us of the Senator's successful grassroots campaign" and that they were inspired by Obama to brew "an entirely unique ale that doesn't adhere to traditional style guidelines."

Another big similarity between beer and candidate: Made with a heady mix of "five different kinds of European crystal malt and three different kinds of Pacific Northwest Hops" and only available in New York and Massachussetts, Hop Obama probably won't be the beer of choice anytime soon for conservative drinkers in middle America.

Politics aside, Hop Obama delivers on its promise of drinkability. It also makes me wonder what kind of craft ale John McCain could inspire? Maybe a barley wine? Something that ages well.

I've always been a pretty big fan of absinthe: I've had the sweet, fruity liquor that's served in Amsterdam's Absinthe bar and the Windex-tasting stuff that the Czechs sell by the case. I used to order bottles from Portugal and Spain, back before it was officially legal, and I remember opening many an unmarked paper packages with bated breath, hoping that their precious cargo made it across the ocean without breaking.

I even made my own absinthe a few times. Not having the necessary equipment for distilling, I was unable to remove some of the bitter alkaloids from my concoction, which meant that I drank it ice cold, heavily sugared, and quickly. Ultimately, given the obsessive nature of many absinthistes, I can't claim to be an expert on the spirit, and have been accused by more than a few people of heresy for the various ways I've tried it. Still, I will admit to being a well-educated novice and an enthusiastic student.

With that in mind, I was incredibly excited when I learned that Trillium, Integrity Spirits' new domestically-produced absinthe, was going to be served at an event that I recently attended. Only the second company in the U.S. to produce the magical spirit, Integrity uses grande wormwood, or artemesia absinthum, the classic absinthe secret ingredient. This choice differentiates it from other brands, including Absente, that use southern wormwood, or artemesia abrotanum. While grande wormwood imparts a slightly bitter flavor, it also contains a larger quantity of thujone, the best-known psychoactive ingredient in the liquor.

I found Trillium to be slightly more bitter than most imported absinthes, although far smoother than the Czech tipples that I've tried. It had a pale green color that louched beautifully, turning a cloudy peridot when I diluted it with water. The 120-proof packed a decent kick, yet was still fairly smooth and pretty delicious. Moreover, as the spirit worked its magic, I felt the lessened anxiety and general relaxation that I've come to associate with the best absinthes.

Unfortunately, Trillium is unavailable outside Oregon, as Integrity is trying to find a distributor that will effectively market their product. While I'm waiting for it to make its way to this coast, I think I'm going to try to convince my mother-in-law to send me a bottle. Supporting domestic absinthe is now, officially, my patriotic duty!

Several years ago, wine charms entered the marketplace and became all the rage. They were cute little doodads that you slipped onto the stem of your wine glass during parties, making it easier to determine which glass was yours out of the sea of glassware on the coffee table. I always liked the idea of wine charms, but in practice, I found them sort of fussy and far to easy to lose in the post-party cleaning up process.

I've always dealt with the problem of glass confusion by using my collection of mismatched glasses for all party drinks, wine, beer and soda included. However, last night I discovered another option that, I must admit, has got me swooning over glassware for the first time in my life. Check out these fantastic chalkboard glasses! Write a quick note on the glass prior to pouring and never again risk getting a swig of your date's drink instead of your own. I imagine that with a little chalkboard paint and some cheap glasses, this could also turn into a fun DIY project.

Hollywood has endorsed products for decades: cigarettes, perfume, hair color, facial products, and now wine. According to Wine Enthusiast west coast editor Steve Heimoff, everyone from Paris Hilton to Wayne Gretzky and Brett Favre are hawking their own wine brands. (Hilton's Prosecco comes in three fruit flavors, no less.)

I'll admit I am sometimes sucked in by celebrity brands. As Eli Portnoy, a branding strategist interviewed in a New York Times article about celebrity endorsements, said, we're just a gullible generation who likes to live vicariously through the beautiful people. (It's not just this generation, of course: my five-year-old daughter can spot a Hannah Montana product from 20 feet away, and she'll pick Barbie toothpaste over SpongeBob SquarePants toothpaste regardless of flavor.)

A beautiful celebrity can sell me anti-aging cream, but when it comes to wine, I'm strictly a what's-in-the-bottle girl. I don't care whose picture is on the label or who is being paid big bucks to move it off the shelves, if it's a good wine at a good price. Generally, the more money put into the making of the wine and the less put into marketing, the better for my palate and pocketbook.

Yet Nielson reports that the celebrity wine market is growing, with Phoenix and Los Angeles leading the celeb-obsessed masses. It's true that wine-buying can be a confusing and intimidating process, and if you don't know exactly what you're looking for and you see Brett Favre's sweet mug on the bottle it might make a better adventure than an unknown brand.

Are you more or less likely to buy a bottle of celebrity wine, and why?

I love toast and there is absolutely no shortage of good toasters out there, but what about one that could handle a pita (or other kind of flat bread)?

Design Blog recently posted a short video demonstrating a new pita toaster design. Even though it's just an idea right now, Design Blog sees plenty of potential. From the post I assume that the pita toaster should be able to handle the pita being stuffed.

I think this is a great idea, but it seems that a toaster oven would be able to handle a pita sandwich. What do you think?

[via Chow: The Grinder]