Tag: Food »

I wish I knew something about wine. I enjoy wine. I know what I like about wine. But I have to rely on advice and iPhone apps in order to have a clue about them. By the looks of things, WineStein Pro is right up my street offering some pretty comprehensive information on all things wine.

WineStein Pro is a wine calculator, basically. You enter the meal you're planning on eating, right down to how you're preparing each ingredient, tap the button and WineStein Pro determines the best wine to go with it. Giving you a score out of 10 as to its compatibility, WineStein Pro explains what type of wine it is (such as red or white, dry or not), what kind of price you should expect to pay (using Euros as a guide rather than dollars) and the grapes used. If you pay the $2.99 annual subscription fee, you can also look at more than one result and filter according to wine type and price if you're on a budget.

It's all pretty comprehensive covering more than 2000 ingredients, 600 wine types and hundreds of sauces. While an internet connection is needed to process the calculations, WineStein Pro has pretty much everything covered. It's free to download and the extra options such as filtering and more variety is only $2.99 for a year or $0.99 for a quarter. Plus it's an universal app. What more could you ask for?

Condé Nast Digital's latest addition to Gourmet is the launch of the official application for iPad, called Gourmet Live, allowing users to explore their "passions for every aspect of food in a brand new way" (Condé Nast). The application is free, includes some recipes to get started, and is available to download now.

"This app brings together the key components of a good meal — great company through access to social networks, the best ingredients in the form of fantastic content, and a beautiful presentation," said Juliana Stock, General Manager of Gourmet Live, and Creative Marketing Director for Condé Nast Consumer Marketing. "We’re serving up content developed exclusively for Gourmet Live and curating the great content of Gourmet magazine in reimagined ways."

Gourmet Live brings more than just recipes, offering news and food-related information from celebrities and even President Obama: "Read about how the Obamas’ eating habits reflect on national food trends. Hear a four-time Oscar nominated actress talk about her love of food, family and butter. Follow one man’s quest for authentic British food in NY and LA" reads yesterday's release.

New covers are updated every day on the application, with new stories and recipes "at least once a week." The application also includes a social networking 'reward' feature, allowing you to save articles and get inside tips if you connect with Facebook or Twitter. The application's design is modern and pictorial, placing emphasis on images on the home page and text within the articles. The layout is clean and the font smart, but there is no interactivity (like check boxes).

Whether this will become another essential utensil in your kitchen, or just an application that you'll try out once, it's free to download and quick to install - meaning there's nothing to lose. Just be sure that your hands are clean when you tap the iPad, otherwise there's going to be even more cleaning to do!

For more information and frequently asked questions, see here.

[Image courtesy of Gourmet]

You probably know that drinking water is good for you, but do you know how much you are taking in each day and how much you should be? Do you know which foods hydrate you and those that dehydrate? Absorb Water is a simple iPhone app that can tell you how much hydration you are getting from anything you eat or drink that has a water content over 65%. Whether you’re eating fruit or drinking beer, you can add your intake to the app and then chart your progress. Cleverly, the app isn’t all about the foods that are giving you water but those that take it away too, with one of the less pleasant but ultimately important parts of the app being the Mellow Yellow chart that lets you calculate your urine color and determine your hydration level. Come on, you know you’ve always wondered!

The ultimate aim of Absorb Water is to help you drink the equivalent of 12 glasses of water every day but doesn’t force you into heading to the faucet every five minutes. By using foods as well as drinks and monitoring them within the app, you have a much better idea of how much you are ingesting and how much more you need. As apps go, this is a healthy and fun tool that will be frequently updated by developer Syndicated Puzzles as more feedback is gained from users.