We recently featured a microwave that was hacked to play YouTube videos while it cooked food, but for those who want their kitchen hacks to  play a direct role in their food preparation, here are ten ideas to get your food-related geek-juices flowing.

Make A Sous Vide Cooker From A Beer Cooler

While “sous vide” has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the cooking world for the last few years, those of you who don’t work in kitchens or read cooking websites would be excused for not knowing the term. Sous vide literally means “under vacuum”  in French and that’s essentially how this food is prepared –vacuum sealed food is placed in a low heat water bath and cooked very slowly. The cooking method generally allows for foods to cook more evenly, retaining a better texture and its original appearance.

Unfortunately, a quick search on Amazon will show you that a sous vide cooker will run you a minimum of $200. Then you’ll need to buy a vacuum sealer, which will add on at least $30, and non-reusable plastic bags for the sealer that can quickly add up too. All of this is a pretty big investment –especially if you just want to check out the process before you commit.

To hack yourself a cheaper option, Serious Eats suggests using a beer cooler, a thermometer and a few Ziplock bags, which will cost less than $25 total. Just add hot water to your cooler until the temperature is a few degrees above your target cooking temperature, then add in your bagged food, close the lid and let the insulation do the work for you. As for how well the beer cooler holds up to the real deal: in tests, the beer cooler worked every bit as well as a quality $450 cooker.

Turn A Crock Pot Into A Yogurt Maker

Most electric yogurt makers only incubate the product, leaving out the critical heating and sterilization process. That’s why Chris Reilly of Make Magazine opted to hack his own yogurt maker out of a Crock Pot that automates the entire process. He call it the “Yobot.”

While the process is pretty involved, for those with the tech skills to pull it off, it seems like a great way to go through the yogurt making process. As a bonus, since you’re already programming a temperature gauge into the Crock Pot, you could easily tweak it just a bit more and make a combination Sous Vide cooker, yogurt maker and Crock Pot in one…now that’s a useful appliance.

Make Your Own Hotel Breakfast

(Video Link)

If you’re sick of leaving your hotel without a home-cooked breakfast, Natalie Tran has a solution. In this video, she shows you how to make oatmeal or soft boiled eggs with a coffee maker, and bacon and fried eggs with aluminum foil and an iron. It might not be the most delicious food in the world, but it’s better than nothing –which is what most hotels offer.

Concoct A Three-Course Meal With A Coffee Maker

Over at Neatorama, our fridge only contains a bottle of crusty mustard, a half -eaten can of green olives and a few hard boiled eggs wrapped in bacon, then sausage and then more bacon. But at other websites, the fridges can actually say a lot about the companies themselves. The one above belongs to Nickelodeon. See if your favorite website is listed and if so, what they have to eat and drink in the office over at the link.

Link

Back in July I was happy to bring you all art nouveau images of the women of Firefly, but if any of you ladies felt left out, here's Mal, Jayne and the rest in the same style. Swoon.

http://store.qmxonline.com/Firefly-Les-Hommes-Poster-Set_p_155.html Via Nerd Approved

Reddit user JuicyTheZombie has become the Skyrim version of a hoarder, collecting a trophy, be it a piece of armor or a weapon from every character he has killed. The result is already impressive, I can't imagine what it will look like by the time it's done.

Link Via Geekosystem

Bees have an impressive sense of smell and New Zealand biologists now believe they may be able to train them to help identify people with tuberculosis by the faint floral odor victims of the disease develop.

“When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours we found the bees can still smell it down to parts per billion,” says Max Suckling.

Christchurch zoologists are training bees to associate the smell of the disease with a sweet treat and to stick out their tongues when it's present.

While TB is common worldwide, it is most prevalent in poverty stricken areas and the bees could provide an inexpensive screening solution for these people.

Link Via BoingBoing

Image Via Dendroica cerulea [Flickr]

(Video Link)

Personally, I can't get into watching sports on television, but the Puppy Bowl is another story and this video is the World Cup equivalent.

Via BuzzFeed

From George Washington and his cherry tree to Sir Walter Raleigh’s chivalry towards Queen Elizabeth, we have all heard our share of historical myths that do more to illustrate the person in question’s personality than to shine a light on their actual life story. Here are a few historical myths created by inventive writers that still made their way in to history books and elementary schools everywhere.

Columbus Discovered The World Was Round

We’ve all heard the story about how Christopher Columbus was the first person to realize the Earth was round. But despite the fact that many of us were told this story in elementary school, this is about as far from historical truth as you can get. The Columbus story was actually started by Washington Irving, who, despite calling himself a historian, was much more of a historical fiction writer. As a matter of fact, you may recall his name from his most famous work, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” While Irving’s Columbus novel did feature a lot of historical fact and the author spent hours researching the navigator’s life, he also added a lot of his own fictional plot twists to make the story more interesting. Even so, certain fictional aspects from his story did work their way into the public consciousness and eventually, into the history books. In actuality, the idea of a round Earth dates all the way back to Grecian times in 600 B.C. By the time Columbus was born, it had been proven mathematically and someone who argued the world was flat would be considered just as crazy then as someone who believed the same thing today. As a matter of fact, Columbus was the one who was completely wrong in his calculations, not the general public. That’s because navigators of the time completely (and correctly) disagreed with how big Columbus thought the world was and thus, how long it would take to get to India. Columbus was so stubborn that even after he located a new continent, he refused to admit that his calculations were wrong and that he was anywhere except India -hence his insistence on calling the natives “Indios,” Spanish for “Indians.” In fact, because Columbus refused to admit he didn’t sail to the Indies, it wasn’t until a year after he died that America was identified as a new continent by Amerigo Vespucci (the continent was eventually named in his honor).

Washington Could Not Tell A Lie

This is the old story that says that even as a youngster, George Washington was so honest that he could not tell a lie to his father no matter how angry good ol’ dad was that someone would cut down his favorite cherry tree. For some reason, this seems to be a story that teachers like to tell young children as though it was fact, only to tell children that it isn’t true once they grow older. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like teaching kids history might be a little easier if we don’t treat the first president of the USA like Santa Claus.

Remember when magazines were your only option? If you long for those days of old, then you'll enjoy this gallery of popular websites reimagined as magazines. Thank god for the internetz.

Link

You know how when you cut a worm in half you'll get two worms and how mice love cheese? If you said yes, then actually you don't know much about these creatures. Cracked recently took a look at common animal myths that are actually totally bogus. How many of these did you still believe before you read the article?

Link

Our world is filled with extreme climates, peaks and more. If you've ever been interested in these record-breaking locations, then don't miss these ten most extreme places on earth including the largest vertical drop as you can see above.

Link

Tired of staring at your food while it cooks in the microwave? That's so 1980. Fortunately, students from the University of Pennsylvania have managed to hack a microwave oven to play YouTube videos while your food is cooking. If you don't feel like waiting, you can also have the microwave text you when your food is done.

Now that's impressive!

Link Via Geekosystem

Artist Brian Dettmer is a talented artist and his media of choice happens to be books. With a little bit of careful carving, he can make amazing creations from already printed pages. While there are a number of artists who work with books, it seems safe to say that Brian has definately earned his nickname " the book surgeon."

Link Via BuzzFeed

I don't know about you guys, but I love sour candy. As it turns out though, some of it, especially the WarHeads Sour Spray, is almost as bad for your teeth as pure battery acid. All things in moderation, but if you want your enamel to hang around, you'd better lay off the Spree and sour gummies.

Link Via BoingBoing

Ever since NBC announced that Community would be put on a temporary (read:possibly permanent) hiatus, fans have been rallying behind the show. Here's my personal favorite effort to bring support to the show.

What do you guys think about the show? Are you upset about the hiatus?

Link Via Buzzfeed

It's one thing to turn some delicate piece of paper into a small papercraft, but to make something as detailed and elaborate as a Victorian dress is a completely different matter entirely. Artist Susan Stockwell has been creating such incredible designs as the one above for over ten years.

Link Via Buzzfeed