Seeing Red

No food attracts tools like the tomato. Go into a good cookware store during tomato season and you’re bound to find three or four gadgets you never even knew you needed. At Sur la Table in Pasadena recently, we found a tomato “shark” just for removing the core for $5.95, a pulper that separates the good parts from the seeds and skins for making sauce for $29.95 and an array of knives just for slicing tomatoes, ranging from $8.95 to $46.95. Once you’ve sharked, pulped and sliced, you can keep the tomatoes in these really cool canning jars. The Italian company Borgono makes 21-ounce jars (center) that sell for $16.95 for a case of six and 14-ounce jars (right) that are $15.95 a case. Weck, a German company, makes 1-liter jars (left) that are $15.95 for a case of four.

FINDS

Oatmeal Animals

If you have a child who has to avoid wheat, or if you just want to give your kids wholesome treats to take back to school, these wholly oatmeal cookies come in animal shapes. Rather lumpy, unconvincing animal shapes, we must say, but hey, Barney isn’t a very realistic dinosaur.

Snackimals, at Wild Oats, Whole Foods Markets and Bristol Farms.

Cabbie Crackers

City children like animal crackers, so why wouldn’t Southland kids go for these cookies? They’re baked in an equivalently exotic shape, the New York taxicab. One thing: They look better than they taste.

New York Traffic Treats, $1.30, Noah’s Bagels shops.