Beach-ed in the kitchen.

• Position: What's New? - Hamilton Beach Inc.

* One of the blessings (or curses, depending on your point of view) of having a great cook for a spouse is that every conceivable holiday and celebratory feast brings famished family members and hungry friends to our door. While the guest list for these events continues to swell, our oven capacity has not. Ultimately, we had to call in the reserves, so we turned to Hamilton Beach, Inc., Glen Allen, Va., for a pair of much-needed backups: the RoasterChef Roaster Oven and Meal Maker Express Contact Grill.

The RoasterChef ($49.99), which bakes, roasts, cooks, steams, and slow-cooks, has a whopping 18-quart capacity. In other words, a 20-pound hunk of meat--be it turkey, ham, or prime rib--nestles comfortably inside. While the main dishes that emerge from this indispensible fixture are absolutely mouth-watering, the bevy of baked desserts it is capable of producing has the neighbors convinced we're running a bakery in addition to our day jobs.

On the other hand, when we've got the Meal Maker Express Contact Grill ($49.99) going full throttle, the same neighbors are just as sure that the best diner in town is operating out of our kitchen--and it's no wonder. This high-speed grill (able to cook both sides for most meals in 10 minutes or less) comes with a 102-square-inch cooking surface that, when opened flat, expands to a 216-inch double grill. It has a compact, upright storage design as well as dishwasher-safe removable grids and drip tray, and an Auto Shutoff Timer that does its thing when the cooking cycle is complete.

To help prepare the food that ultimately will end up on our table, there's no better utensil than Hamilton Beach's ShortCut Micro Food Processor ($29.99), the only one on the market with a three-way chute that facilitates continuous chopping, slicing, and shredding, as the cutup produce automatically moves through the "exit ramp" into the awaiting bowl...