The title is not a reference to the book "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves which I haven't read. It is a reference to the book "I, Robot" by Issac Asimov which I have and I note is being made into a movie starring Will Smith. It is the second of his books to be made into a major Hollywood movie, and even though "Bicentenial Man" with Robin Williams wasn't a huge hit, it does show that Hollywood is quite intent to plunder the works of early sci-fi writers (like Phil K. Dick) to come up with a least semi-plausible plots for their special effects extravaganzas.
Anyway, back to the title...
Once in a while, like many people, I come up with at least semi-plausible ideas for inventions. Like most people I mentally note them down and then promptly forget about it. After all, very few people have the time, money or inclination to follow through with crazy inventions. I've seen some of my ideas appear in the real world, most recently the electronic music stand, now being sold by Free Hand Systems. That doesn't mean I'm a genius inventor, probably the things I've thought of were just plain obvious and were on the tips of many peoples tongues (or the cerebral equivalent). Anyway I have decided, since I'm not going to actually implement any of these ideas, then why not just share them and perhaps hasten their realization in the real world by someone with the means too.
So today's invention is: Vacu-Milk.
Vacu-Milk is the realization that its not just wine that goes bad quickly. Yes milk will keep in the fridge for perhaps a week once opened, but how many of you bachelors and infrequent shoppers find that one week just doesn't cut it? How many cups of coffee and bowls of cereal have been spoiled by that unexpected lumpy pour?
This is actually an evolution of an idea I had after clearing out my kitchen cabinet that was filled with many jars of spices and finding quite a few of them had gone bad. Okay, one of them was quite possible ten years old (!!!) but I figured these little glass jars would be perfect to put a rubber Vacuvin wine saver stopper on and pump out the air from them.
Yes, Vacuvin probably has a nifty patent on their product (although there are quite a few similar imitators), but I figured what if I don't clone their idea, what if I just sell a little plastic adapter that fits over the top of any existing glass or rigid plastic bottle at one end, and at the other has a wine bottle sized hole that an existing Vacuvin stopper will fit into. Then anyone who already owns a wine saver (Vacuvin or otherwise) can just use their existing pump and stoppers to save spices. This is much more convenient than buying one of those home vacuum sealing kits that are not only expensive, but are big, require electricity and only work with certain types of jars.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that people probably don't care enough about spices to bother doing this. But today I realized that for milk and other volatile fridge liquids they probably do. Yes, you could just poor your milk from the carton into a wine bottle - but wine bottles are too tall for many fridges, don't hold a lot of liquid and are a pain to clean. So, what you sell is a large glass bottle that's got a wide neck for easy pouring and cleaning, but has a sealing lid that includes a wine bottle sized hole to insert your Vacuvin stopper. Put on the lid, insert stopper, pump away and you're done. Kept in this way milk, cream and other liquids should last almost as long as the advertised shelf life.
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