In case you haven’t noticed, the age of the foodie rolls on. In and out of the kitchen, our embrace of our inner gourmand is on television, where chefs and would-be chefs compete for culinary honors; online, where blogs upon blogs document personal tales in the kitchen; and even a kid’s movie about a cartoon rat with a penchant for fine food made millions.

And now, video game developers are tapping into our culinary aspirations with a new menu of products. You can now use your Wii controller to slice, dice, sauté and stir-fry several dishes at once – no splatters and no messy kitchen to clean up afterwards. In the game "Hell’s Kitchen," based on the hit Fox TV show,"wannabe restaurateurs slice and dice their way through each episode, vying for chef Gordan Ramsay's attention." In "Iron Chef" the Wii remote becomes your hand as you hold a knife, spoon, or sauté pan handle and chop, stir, tilt or flick. Of course, there won’t be any real food to eat when your done either.

Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan reviews some of these games in today’s paper, and he joins us live on the line. Click here to read his article. And watch the video below:

I want to tell you about a fabulous 3/4 length swingcoat i got for a steal. It’s by Proenza Schouler, the super high-end design team that drape starlets on the red carpet. But I got this little number for $79, because I got it at Target.

There was a time when buying high fashion brands from a giant retail store would be unthinkable, but over the past few years, Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld and others have sold limited edition clothing to the masses at stores like Target and H&M.

Rob Walker is author of Buying In, and writes the weekly "Consumed" column for The New York Times Magazine, and he says the current economic downturn may mean more merging of fashion’s high and lowbrow.

I grew up in the waning years of the space age. Cars no longer had big fins, but the Russians were still the bad guys, and the Jetsons were still on TV.

We all thought the 21st century would land us on moving sidewalks, flying cars, and of course, riding a jetpack. When James Bond donned his jet pack in the 1965 film Thunderball, little boys eyes bulged. The big boys and garage tinkerers got out their wrenches. But, like a generation of would-be flyers before them, their efforts sputtered out.

Last month, Eric Scott jet-packed across a 1,500-foot wide Colorado canyon – he could only stay in the air for about thirty seconds. Why can we send a man to the moon, but only fly with a jetpack for under a minute?

That question frustrates Mac Montandon. At 35, Mac suspected he was having a premature mid-life crisis, couldn’t afford a Porsche, and traveled the world in search of his childhood dream: to fly a jetpack. He tells the story in his new book Jetpack Dreams: One Man’s Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was. Mac joins us with more on the history, and possible future, of the jetpack.

Watch a trailer for Jetpack Dreams from Mac Montandon:

And watch a video of Eric Scott's 9-second flight:

(Photo of Lost in Space, with stars June Lockhart and Guy Williams, a pop culture touchstone for jetpack obsessives the world over.)

The holiday shopping season kicked off better than expected last Friday. If you still have names to cross off your list, consider skipping the big-box department store and making something by hand.

The website Instructables.com has thousands of craft ideas you can browse through. The site is a magnet for DIY enthusiasts who post detailed instructions for personal projects, from making a wallet out of computer circuit boards, to origami roses made from duct tape. Now, a new book, The Best of Instructables, Volume One: DIY Projects From the World’s Biggest Show and Tell turns those posts into pages. The website has about 18,500 projects, which they've narrowed down to a little over 120 for this book.

We invited Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables.com to join us with some ideas, including a marshmallow shooter, an "invisible bookshelf," an arc light reactor inspired by the movie Iron Man, and an iPod speaker made out of a Hallmark music card and a cereal box.

And if you’re in Boston this coming Sunday it’d be worth dropping by the Bazaar Bizarre, Boston’s annual DIY holiday craft fair. It’s held at the Castle at Park Plaza between noon and 7 pm.

A video game that could someday lower your car insurance premiums. AllState has started a pilot program called "Brain Fitness" that encourages drivers to play a specialized game that could improve real-world driving skills. Right now, the insurance company is offering the games to 100,000 drivers in Pennsylvania only, aimed at drivers in the 50+ age group. But if accident rates go down among that group, the company may offer the games in other states.

The video games are developed by the California company PositScience, and are part of a broader effort to use games to enhance brain plasticity. Jeff Zimman, CEO and cofounder of PositScience, was quoted as saying, "we're at the beginning of a revolution in brain fitness that is akin to the physical fitness craze that took off in the 1970s." PositScience research scientist Peter Delahunt joins Word of Mouth with more on the program.

Watch a trailer for "Brain Fitness 2: Sight & Sound" on PBS:

(Photo by Kyle May)