Embrace the Stochastic Kitchen with Foodie Dice

Food Geeks: Do you worry about getting it right? Do you find yourself poring over seven recipes for the same dish trying to figure out which one is the best kind of right? Do you contemplate the humidity level when someone says “meringue?” Do you have a wristband saying WWKD? (What Would Kimball Do?)

ThinkGeek would like you to consider another way.

Stochasticity, or randomness, is a concept with applications in many scientific fields. We don’t deliberately bring it into the kitchen most of the time.

Yet.

The “Foodie Dice Tumbler” will liberate you from enslavement to “flavor profiles” and “process” and “recipes” and let you tumble headlong into a giant tossed salad of the mind. The recycled wine bottle tumbler (natch) contains nine attractive six-sided birchwood dice (gamers, talk to ThinkGeek about upping your Meal Mythos with those freaky-deaky 20-sided ones if you have a Call of Chthulu banquet on the horizon). There are dice for cooking methods, various seasonal veggies, vegetarian and non-vegetarian proteins, herbs, carbs, and “bonus ingredients” (Dear Alton Brown: Were this your invention would you support BACON as a bonus or do you think it should be a basic human right? The world awaits your reply!)

Roll ‘em and roll with it. That is all. Clearly the applications are endless: In-home Food Network-style throwdown where two talented hotheads must duke it out to create a miracle using salt cod, Swiss chard, rosemary and peanuts. Bored kids who will only eat broccoli and Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies will now feel a dawning sense of autonomy (which is ironic when you think about it, but so much about parenting turns out to be like that) as they roll the dice themselves and seal their own fate. (“Yes, snow peas. Better luck next time, cowboy!”) Moms sick of hearing “Again?” about their roast chicken can now say “The dice made me do it” while plunking down sous-vide Tofurkey Kielbasa and collards and walking off to enjoy a Playing House rerun on USA and a glass of Central Coast Pinot.

Method to your madness? Meet madness as method. ThinkGeek.com has got your back.

An award winning poet and longtime food and wine pornographer, Amy Glynn was first accused of being a “food snob” by her parents at age 8. Her book “A Modern Herbal” was released by Measure Press in 2013. She lives in the SF Bay Area, Ground Zero of the “Delicious Revolution.” She thinks about apples a lot. Follow her on Twitter @AmyAlysaGlynn and on Facebook here.