Cooking Dinner From the Road 232
Roland Piquepaille writes "After 12 years of development and with the help of NASA's Embedded Web Technology software, the TMIO company is delivering its first smart ovens. You can monitor these refrigerator-ovens from any Internet connection. For example, you can adjust and control the oven settings from your cell phone and be sure that dinner is ready when you get home. But cooking from your office or your car won't come cheap: these ovens carry a price tag of $8,699. Right now, they're only available in North America, but I bet there soon will be distributors in other parts of the world. Read more for additional details about these smart ovens."
OCD (Score:5, Funny)
As a sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is worth almost ten grand to not have to spend my entire day worrying if I did, indeed, leave the oven on.
Now if they could only port this technology for my coffee maker.
Re:OCD (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2324.html [faqs.org]
Re:OCD (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously shhhh! (Score:2)
I have oft thought to find someone with OCD and try and implant new and amusing compulsions in them.
My favourite bizzare idea was 'did I wipe properly?'
omg, that would so pwn!
please type the word in this image: glossed
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
Re:OCD (Score:2)
Yeah, but how many times have you received / made a "pocket call". Yeah, you know what I mean, when the celphone dials someone in your addressbook without you initiating it? Well now you can worry all day whether or not your pocket started your oven...
By the way, your fly is open. :)
Re:OCD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:OCD (Score:3, Funny)
Why so expensive? (Score:2)
Re:Why so expensive? (Score:2)
Re:Why so expensive? (Score:2)
A simple, inexpensive diode bridge will take care of that easily. There are other considerations that anyone building a device must deal with. A remote controlled oven or any other device possibly could do real physical damage upon malfunction for whatever reasons. Extensive testing can run up quite an R&D bill. This is where computer manufacturers and software vendors usually cut corners. When your Windows system crashes, you might lose some work, but yo
People: Obsolete (Score:4, Funny)
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:2)
Don't trade her in yet... When they say 'self cleaning', I guess they are only talking about the inside of the stove.
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm typo, try this one:
Hmm. All has been completed. With this, I no longer need to try and buy a wife
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:2)
And cleans.
So why am I married again? Oh the sex.
So why...
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:2)
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:2)
Not to mention the dangers of trying to copulate with a Smart Oven... i like it hot, but it a metaphorical sense for sure.
Re:People: Obsolete (Score:2)
Or (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Or (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the idea behind this smart oven is that it refrigerates the stuff while you're gone at work, so you can safely leave that Stouffer's brand frozen pork chop and mashed potatoes in there for 10 or 12 hours (or a week, if you feel like it) without it going bad while you're gone.
Whether that's worth $9000 odd dollars to you is another question, but it is at least more than an oven on a timer.
Re:Or (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Or (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, with the exception of a few ingredients, there is no problem with leaving chilled stuff out over the course of a day. And if they start out frozen, I doubt there's any danger with any food.
After all, if you want to thaw a chicken filet or a piece of salmon, that takes hours with it lying alone on a plate on the counter. If you have it lying together with other frozen ingredients in a containe
Re:Or (Score:2)
Re:Or (Score:2)
Better is to put your food (in plastic!) in a bowl of cold water. Better still is to remember the day before (or three days before for a turkey) and put the item into the refrigerator to thaw. Then take it out about half an hour or 45 minutes
Re:Or (Score:2)
a quick defrost on the countertop (it defrosts quick, just a couple of hours) won't do any harm. the cooking process will kill most bacteria.
Not necessarily.
Doing so assumes a number of things:
Just get takeaway (Score:4, Insightful)
Go out to a funky cafe/resteraunt, and spend that $16 on a well made pizza/pasta/stake and 3 beers.
No wonder it takes $500million to launch a shuttle.
Re:Just get takeaway (Score:4, Funny)
Go out to a funky cafe/resteraunt, and spend that $16 on a well made pizza/pasta/stake and 3 beers.
You don't understand the term conspicuous consumption do you? You're supposed to spend 9K on the oven, then go the funky cafe. Then you tell your companion "Excuse me for a moment," pull out your blackberry and do a few taps, casually explaining off hand that you're telling the oven to put the Kobe steaks back into the fridge and not to decant the 1855 Château Latour.
Re:Or (Score:2)
No juice, no house (Score:2, Funny)
Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you used your oven?
Are you willing to prepare a dish in the morning and put it in the oven before you leave for work?
Would you actually trust this thing not to burn down your house?
My point is this: cool idea, but hardly worthy of a front-page post.
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Yesterday afternoon. It's winter, after all, and using the oven also heats the house. Plus the food comes out better than when you microwave it.
Sometimes. Probably not usually, but with an oven like this, you could in theory prepare a few dishes on the weekend, put them in the bottom of the refrigerator for the rest of the weekend, then put Tuesday's dinner in the oven (set to refrigerate) on Monday night before you go to bed.
Also, lots of people who do serious cooking could make use of these on special occasions. For example, on Thanksgiving or Christmas, if you cook a big meal with turkey, ham, dressing, sweet potatoes, a pie or two, etc. there is a LOT of scrambling to do to get it all done. It's not uncommon for people who are hosting a Christmas gathering to get up at like 4:00am or 5:00am to start cooking so that it can be ready at lunch time. If part of that could be prepared the night before and could take itself through the rest of the process automatically, that could seriously cut down on stress in situations like that.
There are millions of people who are perfectly comfortable going out or even going on vacation and leaving running appliances that work by burning explosive gases. If you don't believe me, then answer this: when you go out of town, do you turn off the natural gas supply to your water heater and furnace? Do you even think about it possibly burning your house down?
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Food in the microwave ends up soggy on the outside, which IMHO is shitty.
When I was growing up, we didn't have a microwave and I don't ever plan on buying one for myself.
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
apparently it's a lot more than just "some people".
Try walking down the microwaveable TV-dinner asle at your local grocery store sometime, notice how huge it is compared to the... um, oven cooking asle, or whatever it'd be called.
"When I was growing up, we didn't have a microwave and I don't ever plan on buying one for myself."
did u walk 10 miles in the snow uphills both ways to get to school too?
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Im a bit of a cooking newb but college food has made me get really into it. I went to the grocery store to get actual basic foodstuffs (Im getting tired of boxes: boil water, throw in pot, "enjoy") and they were surprisingly scarce. Everything at the store is in boxes and bags of already-made or just-add-heat sort of things. It was a wee bit disheartening.
P.S. Anyone know a good AND easy recipe for Hollandaise sauce? Im about ready to give up on my eggs benedict
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
P.S. Anyone know a good AND easy recipe for Hollandaise sauce? Im about ready to give up on my eggs benedict dream.
Since you are talking about a rather unstable emulsion that gets rather finicky if you do not watch the heat (when the egg proteins shrink and squeeze out the butter you are simply screwed...) I would recommend taking a peak at the version in Julia Childs' "The Way To Cook" for the basics. It is also a bit of a cheat, but there are whisks out now that also have built in thermometers so you c
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3 egg yolks
2 tbs. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. salt
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper
In a small saucepan, heat butter to bubbling but do not allow it to brown (or melt in microwave). Put egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne into a blender. Cover and turn motor to high. Immediately remove cover and quickly add the hot butter in a thin but steady stream. Once all the
butter has bee
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
you cook your cereal and crackers in the oven? how strange...
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
The microwave has its place - for lean cuisine pseudo-Chinese food, there's very little difference between conventional and microwave preparation. But for anything that has bread in it, except when it's specially designed for the microwave, the conventional oven's miles better.
For something like a lasagna, the conventional oven beats the microwave every time. Too bad about the
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Ha! What do you think the rest of the store (generally excepting drinks, cereal, and snacks) is doing?
Ever wonder what people do with all those funky things called vegetables, or did you think that they were ALL for salads?
How about that wide assortment of meats?
Lasagna noodles? Rotini? etc?
Flour is used for more than flour tortillas.
Start watching "Good Eats!" or something dude, because "not knowing how to cook, is like not knowing how to fuck." - Robert Ro
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
and chips and crackers and cookies and... you know u just named a huge part of the store right? They all have their own asles in most large grocery stores.
"Lasagna noodles? Rotini? etc?"
and how many asles do those have? .... that's what i thought. And I microwave my pastas whenever I can, boils much faster.
""not knowing how to cook, is like not knowing how to fuck." - Robert Rodriguez"
who the
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Sometimes. Probably not usually, but with an oven like this, you could in theory prepare a few dishes on the weekend, put them in the bottom of the refrigerator for the rest of the weekend, then put Tuesday's dinner in the oven (set to refrigerate) on Monday night before you go to bed.
Unless the oven also has built-in regridgeration (which some do, but most dont), you would not want to do this. Leaving any kind of meat out that long at room temperature, even if it is going to be subsequently cooked well,
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Yup, it's currently called a crok-pot. I use mine all of the time. I would love to be able to have an oven that I could trust as much as the good ol' crok.
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
So we'll program in a cooling cycle, than (beep beep) we enter in to heat at 300 degreess for (beep beep), and (5 minutes of heating and cooling cycles later) and now we are ready to start cooking.
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
And I wouldn't ever make dinner in the morning. I'd make it the night before and stick it in the fridge. It makes for better marinading anyway.
But yeah, I don't know why this is on the front page either. Maybe the web-enabledness is a sign of thi
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
Yesterday, made baked zitti.
Are you willing to prepare a dish in the morning and put it in the oven before you leave for work?
I prepare all of my food for the week on sunday, trying to bulk up and this is a good way to make sure I have enough food for the entire week while keeping track of what I ate. I'd like to be able to stick it in the oven before I leave and know it'll be ready when I get back.
Would you actually trust this thing not to burn down yo
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
What the heck? I use it constantly. it's on right now. Microwaves are only good for vegetables. Fast food sucks to badly, it's more like toxic waste. proper restaurants are expensive. Plus I can make a significantly better meal myself, than all but the most expensive restaurants. And I'd need an Iron Chef's salary to go to those restaurants.
Are you willing to prepare a dish in the morning and put it in the oven before you leave for work?
Absolutely.
Would you ac
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
My wife and I use our oven all the time. I love baking fresh bread, cake, cookies, pies etc. And shes a world class cook who roasts and broils and bakes all the damn time. Just because you don like to make your own food doesn mean no one else does.
Re:Thank you Roland for the Non-Story (Score:2)
People trust AMD processors not to burn down their house either, but check these out:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2001/09/17/hot_spot/ [tomshardware.com]
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArti cle.asp?ID=193 [logicalexpressions.com]
under the hood (Score:5, Funny)
Re:under the hood (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I did. I used to have a job that meant I'd regularly be driving from between minesites in the north of Western Australia. I'd always use the heat from the exhaust manifold of whatever car I was driving to heat up pies and other food.
The turbo shroud on a Holden Rodeo (not sure what the US equivalent is - probably an Isuzu) was just the right size to hold a pie or foil-wrapped meal. Landcruisers were good for the heat, but had no secure area for the food - I lost a couple of meals until I worked out how to wire it them place properly.
It wasn't an original idea of mine either - Manifold Destiny has been around for years. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375751408/qid=9
Re:under the hood (Score:2)
Re:under the hood (Score:2)
Re:under the hood (Score:2)
from the Simpsons:
Chief Wiggum: Engine block eggs! How do you like yours, Lou?
Lou: Easy Over, there, Chief....
Actually, no... (Score:2)
I already have one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I already have one (Score:2)
It can be used to cook things that don't have the consistency of soup or stew. It cooks by convection and radiation rather than by boiling. And you can boil things in an oven as well, so this thing seems a lot more versatile.
Re:I already have one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I already have one (Score:2)
Big Deal (Score:2, Interesting)
For some great recipies, check out Manifold Destiny [amazon.com] for some delicious and low-tech ways (aluminum foil, meat, vegetables, and possibly some fish to grill) to prepare some great meals. The best part is that your final destination does not have to be home. If planned properly, a picnic at a rest stop and no dishes to cleanup when done will have you be the envy of your fellow passengers.
Re:Big Deal (Score:2)
Re:Big Deal (Score:2)
$699 for the oven and... (Score:5, Funny)
Smart vs Accessible (Score:4, Insightful)
New Crime? (Score:2, Funny)
It's safe -- it's Microsoft (Score:2)
Don't worry -- it's run by Microsoft software, so you know it'll be invulnerable to evil hacking scum.
Real cooking from under the hood of a car (Score:2)
Shoot for the Moon not the Moonpie (Score:2)
some Omega controls http://www.omega.com/ [omega.com]
all hooked up by their industry standard ethernet interface http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/i to_doc/ethernet.htm [cisco.com]
to a PC http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/pc.htm [sjsu.edu]
and you have the same thing for less money.
Tell NASA to shoot for the moon NOT the moonpie!
This thing has built-in spyware (Score:2)
As for the device itself, the manufacturer's link is this. [tmio.com] It's just an oven with refrigeration capability and remote control. Here's the user manual (.pdf). [tmio.com] With an EULA, no less.
Not only does this oven have an EULA. It has spyware. It phones home to the manufacturer.
Re:This thing has built-in spyware (Score:2)
That's because the no-follow link is given to the "submmitter" link, his website, But he sneakily links to his ZDnet blog in the story, without any notice that it's his site. And when you go there, you find Roland's trademarked warmed-over crap pasted from ther sites about this jo
For $8600 (Score:2)
And I don't trust a crock pot to go unattended. Having a full blown oven going with nobody to watch it is asking to come home to a smouldering ruin.
Re:For $8600 (Score:2)
From the "solution looking for a problem" dept. (Score:2)
And no, I didn't read the article but it just sounds kinda silly.
Re:From the "solution looking for a problem" dept. (Score:2)
Cheaper option (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Wrap food carefully, and completely, in foil.
2. Place food parcel carefully on engine block; secure with wire if necessary.
3. Drive home.
For the average commuter, your dinner [unm.edu] is now cooked.
Did anyone else think Road Kill from the title? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did anyone else think Road Kill from the title? (Score:2)
Re:Did anyone else think Road Kill from the title? (Score:2)
complete with (Score:2)
Old News (Score:2)
That's weird... (Score:2)
cheaper solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Burning Dinner from the Road (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd much rather be home to monitor the operation of my cooking, frankly. Unless I can use one of those smellometer devices with my cell phone to tell whether or not something's burning.
The other irony is if we have all these mobile devices that make it unnecessary to be in the office, why wouldn't I just stay home with my oven in the first place?
Of course the reality is that for most people, mobile devices are actually excuses not to stay home.
On behalf of hackers everywhere... (Score:2)
Need more info (Score:2)
What is the interest of switching on the oven if you are not sure what is inside?
How is a hot meal useful if it is burned because you could not switch off the oven before it's too late?
Would you let your meat for a whole day in the oven at normal temperature? A fridge feature would be useful to keep the oven content at a conservation temperature until you decide to cook it.
Well, one more time I think this is just a gadget at a price only for people who don't cook themselves.
I haven't noticed anyone pointing this out: (Score:3, Informative)
We saw ovens much like this, and I always have several problems with the concept. First and foremost: Most oven cooking calls for a preheated oven, and foods generally turn out best if they are given a chance to warm up to room temperature before putting them in to cook. So frankly, this would be 10 thousand dollars spent on an item of limited utility. I don't mind having the remote control, because that would allow me to preheat the thing before I get home from work. But I sure don't want my bread dough sitting in the oven as it does so!
Besides, I got a 36" commercial-style range, with two 22K BTU burners, one 18K BTU burner, one 9K BTU simmer-burner, a charbroiler, an oven that will hold full size commercial bun pans, and a 30K BTU ceramic broiler all for roughly half the price of this device. I guess I'll bite the bullet and turn the knob when I want it hot.
New urban myth created! (Score:2)
I know it's true because I read it on a blog of a blog somewhere.
It's a fridge too (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty clever, I think, although I almost never use the oven when I'm cooking dinner - it's all saucepans and frypans. How often do most people cook roasts?
Re:It's a fridge too (Score:2)
Preheat oven to 500
Salt and pepper the bird.
Squeeze the juice of a lemon over the skin and put the two halves into the cavity.
Spread a mashed-together mixture of olive oil, butter, chopped rosemary and chopped thyme on and in the bird.
Put it in the oven and wait until it's done, roughly 45 minutes for a bird that isn't too big.
MAN that's good. Had it Sunday night.
Don't throw out the carcasse, freeze it and make stock from it when you have enough leftover chicken.
Re:It's a fridge too (Score:2)
Re:Great idea... (Score:2)
Re:Great idea... (Score:2)
Re:Excellent! Its now only a matter of time... (Score:3, Funny)
You're sitting on the toilet with your iBook in your lap. You open up Firefox and connect to tp1.domain.com and are prompted for a username and password. After entering the username and password, you see a field called "sheets" where you type in the number 6, and then you click the check-box labeled "auto cut". You click submit and look ever at the toilet paper and it dispenses 6 sheets and cuts them free.
Once you're done wiping, you check the scre
Already been done... (Score:2)
Re:Excellent! Its now only a matter of time... (Score:2)
6000 RPM of pure cleaning power.
(You might need to get an anti-splash screen installed too)
Already obsolete (Score:2)
Re:I'm sorry but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What could possibly be lazier than going to a "drive-thru" and buying a substance that doesn't even resemble food, and eating it in the car?
Re:To What Purpose? (Score:2)
Re:Higher and higher (Score:2)
And besides, this just seems like a great way to add complication to my already complicated, busy life. I'd rather slow down a bit, not speed up.