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Kitchen Meets IoT With Countertop

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Countertop_Lifestyle-1I love gadgets and technology and I’ve come to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) more and more over the last couple of years. The possibilities of leveraging technology in the home fascinate me.

But what about the kitchen?

One of the challenges with any of this new technology is that it’s “new” so it tends not to “play nice” with any of your existing equipment.

Sure, if you’re a multi-millionaire you could dump all your existing equipment and replace it all with “smart” gadgets. But doesn’t that seem wasteful? Especially when so much of this technology is in flux. Who knows which technologies will really take off?

So the latest gadget that has caught my attention seems to be a move in the right direction.

“Countertop” is a smart countertop (thence the name!). But what makes this particular gadget intriguing and quite appealing is that it can work with “dumb” devices too ie. it can retrofit them.

Here’s their rather slick promo video that explains how it works:

https://youtu.be/xWc6XtTpSyk

I love the idea and it almost checks all the boxes. But I don’t have ANY of the kitchen devices it currently works with. Do I have a slow cooker? Yes, but not that brand. Do I have a blender? Yes, but again it’s not that brand.

I do, however, have a Jawbone UP, but without any of the other compatible gadgets this isn’t going to work for me – for now at least.

You can find out more details and order via the official site for shipping later this year.

Compensating For Bad Habits

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Eating. Sleeping. Drinking. They’re all things we do, but a lot of us don’t do them properly.

Personally I am all too aware that my eating habits can be quite bad. Sure, when I’m home for a few days I’ll cook fairly healthy meals and eat plenty of salads, fruits and fresh vegetables. I’m picky about where I buy meat, so I tend to get pretty good quality meat from a small local butcher.

But I’m also aware of how much I misbehave, both when I’m travelling and when I’m either too tired or too busy to make the time to cook a proper meal.

Sleeping? I know I don’t get enough of it consistently. I can push myself to get more, but invariably I’ll slip up and go to bed way too late or have to get up way too early.

And drinking? Well that one is one that I can keep more under control. Or at least to a degree.

Sure, when I’m travelling I probably drink a little more than I would normally, but when I’m not “on the road” the most I’ll have is one or two beers in the evening and not most evenings.

There’s no simple way to “compensate” for this behaviour. It’s not like eating well on a Monday is going to magically fix the junk you ate on a Sunday ..

11123896_1422868228019310_892607272_nSo what can you do?

Personally I’m not too sure, but I know that if I’m going to prepare chips or potato wedges that I’ll use my actifry with only a small bit of olive oil for taste!

Posting about my bad habits won’t fix them, but maybe it’ll make me feel a little guilty .. In any case I know I’ll be eating homemade soup for the next couple of days so I can feel a little less guilty ..

 

Sunday Evening Cooking

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11017644_1600846080147007_2012976492_n

Weekends, as I’ve mentioned before, are a great time to do a bit of extra cooking. Instead of having a quick, rushed breakfast it’s possible to take the extra time to prepare something a little bit more elaborate and time-consuming.

Sunday evening can also be a good time to prepare a tasty dinner as well as doing a little bit towards preparations for the rest of the week.

In my case that meant that instead of simply prepping vegetables for dinner I also used the prepped vegetables and a variety of leftover vegetables to make a tasty soup. Yes, I’m still “cheating” and using a soup maker, but the end results is damn tasty.

Chopping up a bunch of fresh vegetables and making a soup out of them is quite satisfying 🙂

So for the next couple of days I know what I’ll be having at lunchtime – homemade vegetable soup and probably a banana or some other fresh fruit.

Tonight’s dinner worked out pretty well. Chicken pieces with a load of vegetables and plenty of herbs.

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The vegetables were fresh, but unfortunately I’m currently stuck with dried herbs, as my track record with fresh herbs has been pretty bad (short version – they keep dying on me!).

 

Tracking Sexual Activity??

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Trackers and tracking apps. If you’ve got even a passing interest in health and fitness you’ve probably seen or used some of them. Personally  I’ve used a lot of them over the past few years and currently wear an UP 360. I’ll admit I’m not as good at tracking food as I could be, but I do try.

One of the more popular tracking apps for mobile is MapMyRide (which also appears as MapMyRun and a few other names, but is the same app). I started using it for tracking my cycling activity, but it can also track a very broad range of other activities including walking, hiking, running, weight lifting and a whole lot more.

However a friend of mine spotted one activity buried in the options that piqued our interest:

mapmyride-intimacy-tracking

“Intimacy”?

The only possible interpretation for that is that the app wants to track your sexual activity. Of course this opens up a whole range of questions like where on earth would you put the phone to track it and how would you even handle tracking it.

“Sorry darling I need to log this”

Talk about a buzz kill!

I’m not sure why the app developers put it in there, but at least they didn’t overthink it too much, because if you do attempt to track “intimacy” (and of course you would out of curiosity, wouldn’t you?) you will get a message about how it can’t really track it properly.. though it will try..

So you end up with this kind of event being shared with your contacts (if you share via MapMyRide):

tracking-sex-mapmyride

You can even add notes and share it via Facebook and Twitter!

 

 

How Many Calories Are You Drinking?

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When you track calories intake you probably focus primarily on food ie. solids. Sure, a lot of studies emphasise the importance of drinking water, so you might also record your water intake.

But what about alcohol?

Are you aware of how many calories are in that glass of wine?

How about that beer?

Women’s Health produced a very informative and frankly scary graphic to illustrate the calorie cost of common alcoholic beverages and how much exercise you’d need to do in order to burn each of them off:

think-before-you-drink-calories

 

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Resolutions For 2015?

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New Year's Eve dinner

New Year’s Eve dinner

Today is January 1st 2015. It’s the first day of a new year and I am spending it (mostly) on planes.

If there’s any truth in the entire concept of “starting like you plan to continue” then my choice of activity for January 1st is probably oddly appropriate.

In 2014 I got slightly more active. Cycling (a bit) is a good way to burn calories. Walking is too.

I did both in 2014, but I didn’t really do enough of either.

Will that change in 2015? Unless I push myself, no. And of course whether or not I can get myself motivated enough to push myself is another question entirely ..

I guess I’ll find out over the next few months.

So my resolutions for 2015? I’m not sure if I want to make any ..

Weekend Breakfasts

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omelette with pepper, onion and tomatoDuring the week it’s often hard to find the time and energy to prepare a proper breakfast. I often find myself misbehaving and grabbing a bacon roll. Yes, it’s not the “right” kind of start to the day, but it’s still better than no breakfast at all.

Come the weekend, however, and I can take the time to put together something more wholesome and healthy. Assuming, of course, that I have the ingredients to hand.

If I can I like to prepare a simple, yet tasty, omelette on a Saturday morning.

Omelettes, which I’ve mentioned several times in the past, are versatile. You can be as inventive as you like with them. It all depends on what you have to hand.

This morning, for example, I used:

  • 3 eggs
  • onion
  • green pepper
  • tomato

And served it with a hot sauce that I’d picked up on one of my trips to the US.

hot sauce

I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than ketchup, but I like the “kick” it adds to an omelette.

Washing the entire thing down with some freshly brewed coffee gives you a good start to the day 🙂