Now that Christmas is over and there’s no chance of me spoiling any surprises for JB, I’ve got a few products to recommend, starting with this awesome meat thermometer. I think someone sent me a link to it more than a year ago, and I’ve saved the info in my email ever since, waiting for a gift occasion—which is too bad, I should have bought it right away! It’s JUST THAT HANDY.

This thing works via stainless steel probe (heh: probe) that you insert into the meat (heh: insert into the . . . okay, I’ll stop); a heatproof cord attaches the probe to an electronic whatsit which wirelessly communicates to a receiver. You can carry the receiver up to 300 feet away from wherever you’re cooking the meat (BBQ grill, oven, etc), and its LED screen tells you exactly what temperature the food is at. Apparently there is an audio feature which prompts you: “Almost ready!”, etc, but the screen seems practical enough on its own (and potentially less annoying).

We tried it out on our Christmas ham, and it worked perfectly — once the internal temperature reached the right number (which was displayed on the receiver), we took the ham out of the oven. No worrying, no cutting into the meat to check for doneness, easy-peasy. I think this gadget will be fun to try out during the summer when we do a lot of grilling, it seems like that’s when the wireless feature makes this actually more useful than your basic meat thermometer.

Ballpark price: $75
Link: Grill Alert Thermometer on Amazon