Eat: Links for Foodies

I often post updates about recipes that I have found on the Internet. I love my cookbooks, but when I get a hankering to make something new for dinner and I am no where near my bookshelf, I have a number of wonderful go-to sites that I can refer to in a pinch. I finally got around to compiling a list of my favourites so I thought I would share it here. Feel free to comment and let me know which sites are your favourites. Any must-try recipes or hidden gems out there that I missed?

In the beginning (of my food tinkering):

allrecipes - Huge variety of recipes but as they are often user submitted, I an hesitant to trust the ingredient quantities and flavour profiles unless I see numerous positive user reviews.

Food Network US and Food Network Canada - Sometimes, even if I have the book (i.e. Barefoot Contessa) I like to print the recipe so that I don't worry about smearing it with butter or sauce while cooking. Be warned, I have noted that sometimes a recipe shown in a TV episode varies from what is printed in the book (i.e. Giada's Chicken Vesuvio)

Rachael Ray - Most or all of her recipes have moved from Food Network to her personal site. I love cooking but sometimes I feel that the effort can be daunting; Rachael Ray's recipes are great for quick results (Check out her Pumpkin Sage Pasta, Vodka Sauce, French Onion Soup, Apple Spinach Salad, Celery Fennel Slaw, etc.)

Healthy and/or Vegetarian

super natural every day: Heidi Swanson - Beautiful photography and healthful recipes. Her books are filled with even more gorgeous photos. I haven't made enough of her recipes, I must make a sincere effort to use her site/books more often.

Vegetarian Times - THE vegetarian resource during my year without meat. Still a great choice for my 1-2 meat-free dinners a week. Really love the Spicy Tofu.

Veggie Num Num - Such a lovely web site, the pictures do so much for the recipes. I must admit that I haven't tried many recipes from here yet, but I am dying to try the Veggie Kofta

General Sites

Epicurious - The BEST recipe site on the Internet. Period. I believe it has every recipe ever printed in Bon Appetite and Gourmet Magazine. User reviews really help to determine if a recipe is worthwhile; not to mention a great source of information for modifications. The recipe box is a fantastic feature, my box has about 400 recipes stemming back from 2001 or so. Can't gush about this site enough, I'm always surprised when I hear a foodie doesn't already know about this one. Bookmark it. Now!

Martha Stewart - In the past I was a subscriber to Everyday food, but I found the recipes a bit lack-lustre; bland and a bit too simple. Martha's site has both easy and more moderate/advanced recipes. It's not the first site I go to but I would trust her recipes when it comes to baking.

Canadian Living - A good variety overall. Recipes lean towards the lighter/healthier option

Fine Cooking - What makes Fine Cooking special is how educational the articles are. The best resource for tips, tricks, reviews, tools and techniques. LOVE their Christmas cookies.

Food lifestyle blogs; sometime recipes, other times food writing.

David Lebovitz -  Living the Sweet Life in Paris. He is so charming and funny, I love his writing style, not to mention his recipes. Our favourite Carnitas recipe comes from an American living in Paris, go figure!

Smitten Kitchen -  Her cook book has just arrived, and I am excited to support her effort and buy the book. Her blog has really evolved, it's been fun to see her develop from miscellaneous blogger to food blogger. Lovely pictures. The best baked french toast recipe; it's now my Christmas morning tradition!

101 Cookbooks - Love the idea of this blog, and her design/photography is beautiful. Lots of great ideas/suggestions

spicy habibti - A bit less glossy than the rest, but some great Indian flavours and inspiration.

Pickled Plum - This site belongs to a friend in NYC. I must admit that Japanese recipes intimidate the crap out of me, but she makes them seem really accessible. Looking forward to trying the Pumpkin Oreo Muffins and working my way to the Japanese recipes

Yet to try, bookmarked and ready to go:

Saveur - I have yet to make a recipe from this site, but the intention is there. Saveur recipes appear in my Pulse News application daily, and the photos are very enticing. On my to-do list.

Jamie Oliver

yummly

Local (i.e Montreal) Blogs: Restaurant Reviews & Food Scene

Foodie Date Night - Based on their recommendations so far, I trust their reviews enough to influence my restaurant selection.

Will Travel for Food - Also another great way for me to discover new or hidden gem local spots. I love the pics of the meals, it's a sneak preview which really helps me decide where I'm spending my dollars.

Food Guy Montreal

Shut Up and Eat

Chow Hound - Boards (Montreal)

And finally, When in Rome...

Katie Parla's Rome for Foodies - Great site, wonderful iPhone app. If it wasn't for her site, we would not have discovered Trattoria Monti, L'Asino d'oro, Vino Roma and Pizzarium. These places MADE our trip to Rome, and we would go back to every single one if we ever go back.

Eat: What's in the Box?

Answer: Recipes! (...and you thought it was Gweny's head, didn't you?)*

When I first started cooking I had an idyllic plan to put all of my favourite recipes on cute little cards and store them in a charming little recipe box. It appealed to my sense of organization. I didn't have cable and cookbooks weren't the booming industry that they are now so I resorted to reading other peoples cookbooks (old school gems like Joy of Cooking, East meets West, Sara Molton, etc) and copying my favourites by hand. I would cut recipes off of product boxes; I still have a Becel margarine curry chicken recipe that I am still inexplicably fond of despite the fact I haven't bought margarine in years. I started a notebook to collect the recipes, hoping to one day find the time to transcribe them onto those cute little cards. My pet project.

After a while I started to print recipes off the Internet from sites like www.allrecipes.com or www.epicurious.com. Again, I assumed that if the recipe made the cut, I would transcribe it to a cute recipe card. The pile of new recipes kept growing and growing. Eventually I created large Word documents, shrinking the font size down and printing double sided pages. This resulted in binders full of recipes. As awesome as these binders are, I never really considered them a replacement for my recipe box; they were too impersonal, relatively unattractive and consisting of mostly untried recipes. By this time I had also collected a number of  beautiful hardcover cookbooks and a pile of Gourmet, Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit magazines, all containing scads of exciting new bookmarked recipes. There was no catching up and the effort to create these recipe cards seemed way too daunting and not very practical (not to mention anachronistic).

It's the definition of spoiled for choice. Gorgeous food blogs, websites, and iPad applications; so many sources of to-die for recipes! But even with recipe box applications like iPad's Paprika, I can't seem to get my act together and collect all my favourites in one place. It's not 'my' application so it  doesn't have that personal touch that I'm after. I must admit to a bad habit; if I believe a task is too big to do perfectly then I might avoid starting it altogether. If I delay enough, I sometimes come to the conclusion that I no longer want to complete the task, so problem solved!  But I have been thinking about my recipe box project again (hence this post). I was in Michaels arts & crafts store the other day and I saw potential supplies that I could use to create a lovely box, cards, etc. My creativity was momentarily piqued but I quickly realized that the time for an actual physical recipe 'box' has passed. It would be more practical to base my project on a soft copy format but I need to put some thought into how I can do that and still make it personal.

I realized a few days back that I may already have the basis for my  new 'recipe box' idea right under my nose. Without really thinking about it, I had been printing off individual recipes (even ones that I already had in cookbook format) so that I could refer to it while cooking. This way, I didn't mind if it got dirty and I could easily carry it to the grocery store for ingredient shopping. After I was done with the recipe, I noted the modifications to ingredients, preparation, and whether or not I thought it was a 'keeper'. I would then stuff the dog-eared recipe into a big box on my bookshelf. OK, I know what you're thinking, "that's a recipe box, dummy!". But I swear, it started out as a place to keep incense, tea lights and matches; the pile of folded, sometimes stained, doodled upon recipes amassed by happenstance and I hadn't even noticed it. I'm not exactly sure how I will go about it but I think I will take this informal recipe box, combined with photos I have taken and have a recipe book printed of all my favourite tried and true recipes, a la iPhoto format. Everyone I know seems to have pretty, hardcover bound photo albums of children's photos, so why not recipes?

Aside from printing up a personal recipe book, I have also considered using this blog. Perhaps I could format it in a way that my recipes are indexed like other food blogs, and consider this my online recipe box? In a lot of ways, the work has already been started. I have posted numerous times about the meals we have made, complete with photos. Perhaps with some organizing and frequent posting, this could be my solution. I'd love to hear from anyone who read this post, how do you manage your recipes? What do you do with your most coveted ones, such as recipes that have been passed down in the family? Got any to share??


*nerdy movie reference, but I won't say which one since my lame-o joke ruins the punchline of the film.