Autumn Products to Cook up a Storm!
As I receive many enquiries about kitchen and cookery products I have decided to write about a few I saw at a recent trade show.
The Autumn Fair is held annually at the National Exhibition Centre here in Birmingham, it includes everything from aromas to zebras (stuffed toys) and just about every type of gift or gadget you could imagine.
It is primarily aimed at retailers but attracts a wide range of both visitors and exhibitors from around the world.
Naturally, I was interested in the cookery related sections and there where some interesting new products on display. Here are a few that particularly caught my eye.
A range of high quality knife sharpeners from Knife Wizard Ltd, they offer a home machine and two professional versions which really do work well and will put a sharp edge on vertually any knife.
They also offer a range of I.O.Shen knives which are of a very superior quality, made from the highest grades of steel and I must admit that I would love a set.
A product new to the UK from Canada is the Beer Machine, an all-in-one solution to making your own beer, literally all you do is add water and one of the range of twenty beer mixes offered and wait for seven to ten days. There’s no transferring from one vessel to another, you just wait, it even has dispensing tap (with a gas bulb) for the perfect beer, all for around £100.
Mermaid bakeware and cookware have some interesting new products, the Food Ring Mate is a very simple device, if you like presenting your creations using a food ring it’s often difficult to get it out easily, this little tool is designed to fit closely inside and push the food out and it won’t break the bank at around £2.50.
They also offer a range of three smaller sized baking sheets for those just cooking for one or two people, the neat thing is that all three will all fit onto a single shelf of a standard oven and I am happy to say that they are British made.
Absolut Form from Gilberts is a range of Danish kitchen and tableware with an accent on design some of which are very eye-catching, they even offer a curvaceous nutmeg grinder.
The Orange Tree Group had a couple of nice items, the EggXact is a three-in-one gadget which is a set of scales for weights up to two kilos (to an accuracy of 1 gram), a kitchen timer and most ingeniously it will calculate the exact cooking time for an egg, they also offer a stainless steel and enamel tea bag bin to help keep your worktop tidy for £12.50.
La Cafetiere quite naturally offer coffee makers, cup and saucers and the Mukka Express, a stove top cappuccino maker that not only brews the coffee but also heats and froths the milk all in one.
The Easy Health Juicer from Theolife is a simple manual juicer which seems nicely designed, easy to use and even better - quick to clean for just under £30, I tried the juice it made and it certainly works. Though if you want something a bit more robust they also offer the Samson multi-purpose juice extractor which will also mince and mill for around £239.
Whenever I visit such events one aspect that never ceases to amaze me is the number of people on trade stands who are so busy talking on or playing with their mobile phones, that they don't seem to have the time to talk to potential customers, it's often those very same people who then complained that they weren't doing much business!
My advice is, if you are there to do business - then talk to people and not your phone!
I am intending to begin a new section of the website in the near future, reviewing kitchen and cookery products, so if you involved in such a business and would like to have a product featured, please contact: The Foody UK and Ireland
Email: The Foody UK and Ireland
© Copyright The Delineator 2000-2005. All rights reserved