Innovative Ways to Eat Outdoors

Check out these innovative tools and products to make eating outdoors fun for everyone!

We just celebrated Memorial Day and that means it’s officially time to get out the grill and plan for some outdoor eating!  Here are a few innovative tools & food products to help elevate your summertime dining!?

Just in time for the summer grilling season, iDevices has updated its companion app for the iGrill.  Remember iGrill? We told you about this ‘must have’ device in a previous innovation episode. This single probe, wireless Bluetooth Smart thermometer tells you when your food has reached your desired temperature - from your mobile device! The thermometer connects to your mobile device through the iGrill app, and will give you the real time temperature of your meat. You can select from dozens of temperature alarms and then you'll get an alert when your food has reached the desired temperature. And if you want to upgrade your grilling skills, the app also comes with recipes and tips! The latest version of the app brings support for the Apple Watch. This summer, watch wearers can monitor the real-time temperature of what’s cooking, set temperature alarm presets, and receive notifications when their food is ready to go.

?For those times when the weather is not your friend, having a backup plan is always a good idea. Try some indoor “grilling” with something like the T-Fal OptiGrill, an all in one innovative cooking device. Set the device to one of these settings: Burgers, Poultry, Sandwiches, Sausage, Red Meat or Fish. Sensors inside the grill will adapt the cooking time to the food’s thickness. A defrost setting takes care of frozen foods; manual control handles the veggies. You even get grill marks on top, like when using one of its fire-cooking counterparts. Check out their website for more.
?Staying hydrated is key, not only for the guests, but particularly the grill chef! You’ll need beverages that are both refreshing, not full of bubbles and free from added sugars or artificial sweeteners – and maybe you want something a little more interesting than water. So what better option than coconut water? For example, check out Pacific Foods Organic Coconut Water. Simple, natural coconut with no added sugars makes for a refreshing, and healthy drink. And packaged in Tetra Pak to maintain flavor, these come in easy to store and carry boxes.

Keeping foods fresh while headed into the great outdoors can be tough, so when it comes to on the go snacks look for products where innovative packaging does the work for you. Take for example, Wild Garden Snack Pack to Go – Hummus & Sea Salt Quinoa chips fun addition to any picnic or bbq and the individual packaged cartons keep food fresh until ready to serve.