Thermal Chef:The Japanese have been using these forever, but they haven't really caught on yet over here. But yet may be now. This is a thermal cooker from Thermal Chef.
It’s the perfect way to bring a piping hot meal with you while camping, fishing or just out picnicking for the day. Of course, it’ll work just as well for the family dinner at home, too.
The Thermal Chef ticks the boxes of many current preoccupations: it’s a slow cooker; it’s ultra-green; and it’ll save you money on your energy bills. Now if only it posted on Facebook too, it’d have it all.
Thermal cookers work by having a pot inside a pot. You prep your ingredients for say a casserole or a curry in just the smaller pot. Bring it to the boil on a stove for about 10 minutes, then pop this whole pot into the larger one, which has high thermal insulation. Close it all up and simply leave it for the next few hours to cook away merrily in its juices and its own retained heat.
No more energy is needed. Stick it in the back of the car or on the carrier of your bike and off you go.
The food doesn’t disintegrate because it’s getting a slow, gentle heat. And it keeps all the vitamins, goodness and colour as this is all sealed in.
Thermal Chef say the cooker will have kept your meal at up to 70 degrees after six hours. So just a few minutes gas or electricity in the morning will see you with a delicious (providing you can cook, of course) meal that evening wherever you may be. Now that is green and smart. The cooker has a 4.5l capacity.
Cost€129.95 from thermalchef.com
Klymit Inertia X Frame
What about that for a name? And the great thing is, this looks as impenetrable as it sounds. It’s an inflatable sleeping mat, albeit one that appears to have had the younger brother at it with a pair of scissors.
The quasi-skeletal shape is just one of its innovations.
Klymit used advanced body mapping to determine where you need support and where your sleeping bag can fill the gaps and they ditched the rest. So now you’ve a sleeping pad that weighs about 260gms and can pack up the size of a tin of beans. With that sort of efficiency, they can call it what they like.
It can be inflated by not a great deal of your own puff – and think of what you saved in the lightweight packing – or you can use one of Klymit’s NobelTek argon-filled canisters which boosts it to full year round spec because a noble gas (NobelTek, geddit?) like argon offers 30 per cent better insulation than your own hot air and it’s Utah-based Klymit’s calling card, with their range of gas-filled, high-end outdoor gear. By the way, argon is non-toxic and non-flammable, so you won’t get a lot toastier than you bargained for. The X Frame itself is made from tough 30D Ripstop nylon on top and even tougher 75D polyester on the bottom.
The only drawback is that it may offer a little tough love for side-sleepers.
Cost$99.95 (€77.60), klymit.com
Sun Reader Bifocals
These might be what you’d call an easy win, doing exactly what they say on the tin. They are off the shelf (web-shelf, that is) bifocal sunglasses, with 100 per cent UVA/B protection. So no more dignity-sapping balancing of sunglasses over your regular reading prescription or weary searching for a glare-free patch of shade to get through your summer reading without going page-blind. There’s no correction in the upper part of the lens and you get to pick your power for the lower reading part of the bifocal.
And the Sun Readers come with a whole selection of frames so your can accessorise your glasses to match the holiday wardrobe. We don’t want the fashion police after you, do we now?
CostFrom $20 (€15.50), thereaderstore.com and others
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