If the only time you pull out your cheese grater is to grate cheese, you're making your grater sad. It's capable of so much more than shredding cheese! And if you've got one of those old, rusting graters you're almost ready to throw out -- don't. You can still use that, too. You'll never guess all the ways you can hack a cheese grater.

The best part of waking up is definitely NOT getting blasted in the face with steam and burning coffee grounds (though I guess that would get rid of the groggies right quick). Anyway, that's why Mr. Coffee is currently recalling over 600,000 Mr. Coffee Single Cup Brewers: 59 (rather disgruntled) people so far have been burned on their faces, upper bodies and hands while attempting to make their morning joe. Yikes!

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, "apparently the problem arises when the power of the steam building in the water reservoir pops the chamber open and causes the brewer to erupt in hot water and coffee grounds."

Yeah, that sounds like a problem, all right. And honestly, I'm not all that surprised ...

So I was perusing this fun little post on Six Common Kitchen Injuries today. Emergency Room professionals were asked what kinds of kitchen injuries they see most often -- and what people should do about them. Gee, it brought back such memories. Ah, what fun times I've had, mauling myself while cooking. The blood, the burns, the tears. It's been real.

I'm not sure how I haven't ended up in the emergency room by now. My son has -- but I'll get to that later. Let me tell you about my sad history with knives.

This is the greatest invention since sliced bread: A bag that lets you cook a grilled cheese sandwich in your toaster. Toastabags. At long last, my dream has come true!

Haven't you always wanted to be able to just pop a cheese sandwich in the toaster? But you can't, of course, because then the cheese would melt inside the toaster and wreck it. You just can't do that.

But now you can. Check it out. Toastabags are the answer to EVERYTHING, I tell you. Behold the genius.

On those nights when you open yourself a can of mushy, BPA-filled "food," do you ever find yourself wishing that you could take that convenience just one step further and make it magically heat up? Well, today is your lucky day. 

Introducing HotCan! The canned food that cooks its own damn self.

HotCan, how did you know? This is the missing link that will get us to our ultimate goal: Taking pills instead of eating food, just like in the sci fi movies. Who else is doing Mexican jumping beans over this thrilling food innovation?

As cheesy as it may sound, there's nothing like being home for the holidays. And I don't necessarily mean that one house that is your main address. Anywhere can feel like home, if you have the right people around you. Still, it doesn't hurt to have the right accoutrement -- aka holiday supplies! -- around, as well ... especially if you plan on entertaining! There really are certain must-have items every home must have this time of year. Here, 10 you should check your cupboards and shelves for STAT -- or else run out and pick up -- to better celebrate the "hap-happiest season of all!"

Until yesterday I didn't own a Crock-Pot. Besides some chili-cheese dip my mom made during football games and perhaps some little cocktail hot dogs, I'm not sure I'd really eaten much out of one either, but suddenly I felt a strong need to head out and buy one largely due to a new Facebook site that launched -- Crock Pot Girls.

I saw a friend on Facebook friend the page, and so I did too just to see what they posted. I think they had about 200,000 followers when I clicked "like." Suddenly I noticed that all my friends were becoming followers, and the next thing you know, I looked and they had more than 1 million followers. As I write this, the page (which launched August 19) has 1,143,163 likes. That's a lot of Crock-Pot love.

I read a funny piece in The New York Times recently about how Russians don't like ice in their drinks -- but I thought the same thing that another blogger thought: It's not them; it's us. Americans are unique in our obsession with ice. Travel just about anywhere else in the world and you rarely see people fill a glass with it.

So what's the deal? Why do Americans love drinks with ice so much? There are a few theories out there, but I think I've zeroed in on the main reason, and it has to do with our kitchens.