Emma's Eats Gift Guides: Gadgets

Images from Target

According to my dictionary a gadget is a "small mechanical device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one," and these are gifts for the people that love them.  The beauty of gadgets is that you can find one that can make life easier for just about anyone, and at any price range.  There are tons of gadgets out there, so I am only featuring a few that take your basic kitchen stuff and bumps it up a notch, upgrades it to something a little more gift-worthy.  A scale is like an upgraded set of measuring cups, millions of people bake weight instead of volume (kind of like how everyone else is all about the metric system, and America would rather not, thanks but no thanks) anyways, they swear by it and it is a more accurate form of measurement.  You may want to include a cookbook with weight measurements in it though, such as Ratio by Michael Ruhlman.  I developed a fondness for electric kettles when I lived in Ireland, they heat water more quickly than a standard kettle on the stovetop and they shut themselves off automatically when the water boils so there is no putting water on for tea, getting distracted and forgetting it on the stove.  My grandmother has one and LOVES it.  An immersion blender is a cooler blender.  Have you ever made a blended soup?  Transferring it to the blender and back to the pot is a huge pain, and there is the explosion factor when you blend hot soup that makes it exciting, but I would rather not have to worry about nearly boiling soup ending up coating my entire kitchen, enter the immersion blender.  Thinking about using a traditional blender over an immersion one doesn't really seem like that big of a deal until you do it for the first time and then you will see, life is better on the immersion side.  A programmable crock pot is pretty self explanatory, crock pots aren't exactly considered sexy, but give  a foodie who works all day complete control of the meal that is cooking all day on their counter and it is like having a personal mini robot chef in a way.  My last suggestion, a Thermos food jar, is also not very sexy, but according the Thermos people, it can keep hot food hot for 5 hours and cold food cold for 7, hello upgraded tupperware and a fabulous bag lunch, sometimes all a girl needs to get through the morning is the thought of a luscious lunch awaiting her.