When I first told my wife about WiFi, she had a glazed look—the kind she often gives me whenever I start talking about “that tekkie stuff”. She’s not really a gadget girl, except when it comes to stuff in the kitchen, wherein she can go for hours debating the pros and cons of a garlic press. (My turn to give her a glazed look.)

But unlike my fixation with the iPod or my race to overclock the my Athlon processor, WiFi was something she actually appreciated. Oh, not the details. She doesn’t care to hear about how it works. But she uses it. Everyday.

She uses WiFi to log on the Internet right before she cooks dinner, where she accesses her favorite recipe site. Instead of her assortment of cookbooks and index cards (where she can never find the recipe she wants, or has the ingredients for), she goes through her virtual recipe box and uses the website’s automatic search function. She types in her preference, or the contents of our refrigerator, and voila! She finds the dish for the day. And she does all of these right in the kitchen, where she has handily propped up a laptop.

I, of course, am the happy beneficiary of her kitchen experiments, and am willing to overlook the fact that she also uses WI FI to—you guessed it—look for the latest garlic press. Yes, folks, she’s discovered online catalogues. Thank God she’s also discovered cooks’ forums, where she can talk to other people about the pros and cons of each brand. Now if I can just get the laptop back…