Last updated 09:20, Saturday, 26 July 2008

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets. The Lakeland HQ in Kendal is a great store and I always have to read the company’s magazine when it lands on my desk.

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Look, no pan!The Tefal Toast’n’Egg

There’s more than 100 pages of products and it’s always fascinating – and sometimes hilarious – to see the latest breakthroughs in kitchen must-haves.

Among the new items in their autumn catalogue (well, with the weather we’ve had so far, we may as well skip summer) are three new meat thermometers, two timers and a ‘low-fat meatloaf tin’.

This is a loaf tin with a perforated insert that allows fat to drain away during cooking (£9.99).

Just £4.99 buys you 14 organic coconut husk fat trap pouches.

Rather than wait for your fat to set so you can scrape it, or pour it down the sink, drop one in your frying pan, roasting dish or grill and it will soak up all your fat, ready to be dropped in the bin.

Or, there’s the new and exclusive ‘Fat magnet’ (£9.99).

It looks like a mini-iron, you fill it with ice cubes, then run it over the top of your stew or casserole.

The fat layer solidifies on the bottom and you can leave it in a dish provided. I’m not sure whether it works on people.

But the ultimate in gadgetry for gadgets sake, has to be Tefal’s new ‘Toast‘n’Egg machine (£39.99).

This allows you (as you may have guessed already) to toast your bread at the same time as poaching or boiling an egg so they are both ready at the same time! Without a pan!

It doesn’t butter the toast though...

My favourite pieces of kitchen cookiness come in the food preparation section which features the many different and madly ingenious ways people have reinvented the knife.

There’s a plastic kiwi knife which allows you to cut the fruit open with the serrated end, then scoop out the flesh with a curved, spoon-shaped end...all for £2.99.

For salad fans there’s a choice of two implements to improve that all-important lettuce presentation.

There are plastic lettuce shears (£2.99) for chopping up the leaves, or a plastic lettuce knife (£3.50).

Because they’re not made of metal, they will stop your leaves from turning brown.

My favourite two items from the latest brochure have to be the ‘Flexicado’ and the Oxo Good Grips Corn Stripper.

The ‘Flexicado’ (£3.99) is a plastic scoop that slices a halved avocado as it scoops.

Meanwhile, the Corn Stripper (£7.99), slices off niblets from the fresh cob and collects them. It looks like a computer mouse and works a bit like a wood planer.

For more info, go to www.lakeland.co.uk