My Stomach Is Growling

Do you ever get excited about your upcoming restaurant visit, as you anticipate the great food and drink ahead? Then, as soon as the meal is over, you feel full, yet ready for more? If so, is anticipation better than the actual meal? Of course, not! We all love to eat and drink, so let’s take a look at what the world of technology has to offer when it comes to satisfying our pallet.

If you are a home chef waiting to get a spot on Master Chef, then the BigOven app will help. It has over 350,000 recipes, allows you to save a digital copy of your own family recipes, and even provides a builtin meal planner. It also allows you to share your recipes on the app’s social media platform. If you opt for the premium membership at $20 per year, you can sort, create, and upload an unlimited number of recipes.

Mark Bittman wrote the book How to Cook Everything; the companion app gives you 20,000 recipes and includes step-by-step instructional videos. The book works well for both beginners and experts. As a nice bonus, it includes a built-in timer so you know how long to cook your food.

If you like wine with your meal and you happen to be a vegetarian like my wife and daughter, here is big news: Vegan wines are actually a thing. You can now find them on many websites and in restaurants. Speaking of wine, Vivino is an app that scans wine labels and gives you all the details about the wine you are about to purchase. It gives ratings, prices, and features and tells you where to buy the wine, with the option of ordering directly from your phone.

Not sure what goes with what? Hello Vino allows you to enter the name of the dishes you are about to eat and will suggest the best wines for a complete dining experience; it’s like having your very own sommelier at your fingertips. For a new way of cooking, check out the Brava; it uses light waves to cook both the interior and the exterior of the food independently. It looks like a microwave oven and includes six individual lamps so light hits specific areas of the oven as needed. It includes a thermometer with five detection points that are accurate to 1/10 of a degree. Want to cook a frozen pizza? Brava has you covered in just 10 minutes versus 25 in a conventional oven; steak and potatoes cook in 15 instead of the usual 45 in a traditional oven. The gadget is not inexpensive— running around $1000 to $1300, depending on the bells and whistles.

Don’t want to go out to eat? Call Grubhub, Ubereats, or Door Dash. These services deliver from just about any restaurant, and you don’t even need to get out of your jammies. Just be prepared to pay a premium for the food and cost of delivery. Hot trend alert: ghost restaurants! There are no store fronts to sit down and enjoy and no pickups, just delivery. I think I gained 30 pounds just writing this article, but what a way to go.

See you on the radio!

Marc Cohen