What’s Your Favorite Recipe Website?

As amazing and vast as the Internet is, I just can’t seem to find *the perfect* cooking website. It’s so different with cookbooks– do you have a favorite cookbook from which you cook ALL the time? I do, I have several. But it’s not so with recipe websites. Maybe because they are usually built around all sorts of contributors who have all sorts of different tastes and ideas. Oddly enough, I like plain food. PLAIN food. No gourmet sauces that take all day to make, no weird ingredients where I have to take a vacation to Paris to find certain foods, no crazy techniques that require a houseful of servants to help. Just plain food.

Is there ANY website out there that offers simple, basic, plain recipes?! For crying out loud! I can’t find one. Maybe every cook out there is trying to outdo every other cook out there. Not me. I just want to slap wholesome, tasty food on the table and get on with life, you know? So many cooking websites think that my life REVOLVES around food. Um, no, it doesn’t. I want to eat because I’m hungry not because I have this sensual, biological urge to indulge my senses in rapturous undulations of culinary ecstasy.

So.

Anyone have any suggestions?

If not, I’m going back to my watermarked, dog-eared, batter-stained Betty Crocker cookbook. I’m rather tired of the same old same old, but sorry, I just can’t muster the energy to whip up the latest, greatest tofu-tainted, kiwi-encapsulated, pine-nutty, asafetida-extracted delicacy for my ravenous teens.

Using Coconut Oil

We got a free quart of coconut oil from Tropical Traditions (see my review at Freaky Frugalite) and the stuff is pretty good! In the review, I mentioned that we’ve used the oil predominantly for cookies. Well, my daughter recently used the oil to grease the skillet for making scrambled eggs. Talk about creative, huh? Theegs had a light coconut taste, but the results were pretty tasty! I don’t like coconut very much (except fresh coconut– I love the fresh stuff), so I think she wondered what I’d think. It wasn’t bad at all. I’ll have to send her a flurry of thank you cards for all the cooking she’s done this summer.

I recommend that you check out my review of the oil. When I first got the oil to review, I wondered what I’d do with the stuff. I never cooked with anything so exotic. But we’ve been using it on bagels and etc, and it’s really pretty good. And after I did a little research into the company, I am very impressed. They have dedicated their business to ofering natural, healthful products. They even have organic foods and grass-fed meat! Worth a look. The website is Tropical Traditions. I’m going to give them my business regularly.

Online Cooking Resources

Boy, I’m glad I decided to sift through my 1,300 emails tonight. They’ve been sitting there since December! They are my “tech” email subscriptions, and I usually browse through them, well, like every three or four months! But I found some really great videos, tips, software programs, and 4-month old news. :-p

Anyway, buried deep with the emails alongside notices about trimedisyn and ANOTHER Apple product release were some links to nifty and free cooking applications!

Cooklet is an online recipe book. I am not completely ready to give up my books, but I do search for recipes online a LOT. My cookbooks are very old, dating back to the 60s, and some of the recipes are fatty and full of carbohydrates. Online recipes are usually more veggie-like. Anyway, Cooklet looks cute. You might like it.

NoTakeOut looks even better. It even has an iPhone app. It’s a meal planning site, but what’s great about it is that it includes side dishes and not just the main course. The recipes there look very good, and the photos are appealing. Click “today’s menu” for the course for today. I like this one!

My friend Carole mentioned a new site she found called E-Mealz. Read about what she thinks of the program so far. I like it enough, except for two things: their meal plans do not accommodate families larger than 4 (or at least, that’s all I could find. If you know different, please tell me!!). And some of the ingredients for things are expensive. Some are gourmet-ish, others are packaged foods. Because I feed a family of 6 adults, we avoid pricey pre-packaged foods and fancy ingredients. So I don’t know that it would be worth my while to get it.

If you know of any other good recipe or meal sites, please let me know. I’m currently expanding my horizons!

Would Someone Please Explain Foodbuzz??

I joined Foodbuzz eons ago. I have since tried to understand how on earth the thing works, but have been unable to figure it out. What the heck does it do? Is it just a cooking kiosk, a site where people toss up links to their food blogs? Is it a voting site, where people vote on your blog or recipe and you somehow make it to the front page?

I’d heard that you could earn a little money from the site… but I haven’t been able to really figure out how it all works. It seems confusing. I admit, I am an impatient gal– if I can’t figure it out relatively quickly (about the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee), then I either move along, or ask for help. ?? So I’m asking for Foodbuzz career advice here. I want to earn some $$…. but how do you do it? If I have to submit recipes and have them voted on…. sheesh, I’d probably lose money. :S My recipes are not anything near gourmet or desirable They are plain old, quick and easy family meals. We’re talking serious homespun here.

?? Is there any room in Foodbuzz for a plain Jane cook like me?

List of Good Recipe Apps for IPod and iPhone

I recently blogged about the very cool apps I’ve found for my new iPod Touch. Well, I found a great website that offers a list of the Top Ten Best Free iPhone and iPod Touch Recipe Apps. It looks really good, and I thought you cookers out there with iPods or iPhones may gleam something useful. I’m still getting used to using my iPod. I haven’t taken it to the store yet or anything, but I’m sure it will be very helpful. I hope to spend some time exploring what’s out there in App-Land for the iPod, as far as cooking and shopping go. A lot of apps are free, which is terrific. I’m really loving my iPod. It is a terrific organizer– I have my calendar, email, shopping list, recipes, music, contacts, IM account, weather, news, and more. All in one little gadget! I love it. I have to figure out how to send cell phone text messages through it (there’s even an app for that). I’m finding that there are apps for everything!! I also love the Amazon and Buy.com mobile apps– while I am out, I can do price checks with stuff online, and see what’s a better price. PLUS I can research products like allergy bedding and other exciting stuff while I am at the stores. It’s soooo coool!!!

OK OK I’m raving a little too intently. LOL. If you’ve been wanting an electronic organizer/mp3 player, get an iPod Touch! They are so amazing. Really.

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