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Net Nerds
Beyond Spam: Internet hunger pangs by Susan Ives, Alamo PC |
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Net Nerds
Beyond Spam: Internet hunger pangs by Susan Ives, Alamo PC |
| Every couple of weeks
I get a mash note from Clarke Bird. "Why don't you write about…?" he'll
say. "Don't you read your own magazine?" I retort. "I wrote about that
already….five years ago." It's been almost that long since I wrote about
cooking on the Internet, and it's time to defrost, reheat and re-serve.
Yahoo lists more than 1,200 cooking sites. Epicurious is still one of the best on the ‘Net. At its core is a searchable file of more than 11,000 recipes. It also contains features from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines; I found the recipe for Pecan-Bourbon Crème Brulee from the Zuni Grill on the Riverwalk in the Bon Appetit archives. Another good site to graze is About.Com. Begin with their recipe of the day and then start nibbling at the links. Categories include
The Snap directory is a good food portal, well organized and fast-loading. Other sites to check are Better Homes and Gardens and Culinary.Com; both have lots of recipes. Your favorite radio and TV cooking shows have companion sites with all of the recipes listed. I’m a fan of public radio’s “The Splendid Table,” Saturday at noon on 89.1 FM. On their site, you will find recipes for the real Salade Nicoise, Sundried Tomato and Pecan Pesto with Prawns, and dozens of other great dishes that have caused me to leave drool marks on my radio. Now I can fix them at home. Food TV (channel 47 on Time-Warner cable) has its own tasty site at http://www.foodtv.com/. Not all of the cooks divulge their cooking secrets, but the nice ones do. You can also look up regional cooking programs, such as The Shortcut Cook, from California. Another good use of the Internet is to download recipe collections to use in recipe database software. MealMaster, an old DOS program, is now freeware and there are a zillion recipes available in Mealmaster format. Download the program from home1.gte.net/welliver/. Then, go to their list of links to find the good Samaritans who have converted recipes to MealMaster format. One zip file, only 111KB, contained 259 asparagus recipes. The database is searchable by recipe title, ingredient, category or cooking direction (for example, saute.) Some commercial recipe software can convert this MealMaster format, so even if you use another program it’s worth checking out. Looking for a secret recipe? Top Secret Recipes on the Web probably has it. Try Seven Seas Free Viva Italian Fat-Free Dressing (The secret is buttermilk powder and gelatin) or Starbucks Frozen Frappuccino (I never would have thought of adding a pinch of salt.) Another list of “copycat’ recipes is in SOAR, the Searchable Online Archive of Recipes; they have 310 of them, including Entenmann's Pound Cake. But it doesn’t stop there. This is a searchable index of more than 67,000 recipes. If you don’t want to search, you can browse, by category (there are 232 marinade recipes) or ethnicity (112 from Indonesia.) All of the recipes are in MealMaster format The Recipe Webring lists 748 recipe sites. The Yummy Recipe webring lists 228. Webrings are groups of sites with a similar theme that band together to point to other sites in their linked circle. The management of the links is centrally administered, which takes a huge burden off of the shoulders of the individual webmasters. The biggest ring of rings is at www.webring.org. If you click on the “directory” icon and search for “recipe” you will be taken to a list of 242 rings, listing thousands of recipe sites. There are webrings for every topic under the sun, so this is a good starting place when you are searching for sites that cover your own off-the-wall hobby or interest. Between the Mad Cows, genetically engineered tomatoes and E-coli, there
is reason to be worried about food safety. Good starting places are www.foodsafety.gov,
an initiative of federal agencies, and The
National Food Safety Database. For information about genetically engineered
foods, visit Frakenfoods.
They quote Organic Gardening magazine:
Not all food sites are serious. The Orkin Man claims that 80% of the world’s population eats bugs, and provides recipes to prove it. Another source of bug cuisine is BugFood, hosted at the University of Kentucky. The ultimate Internet food joke is Spam. Spam has come to mean wanton newsgroup postings or floods of unwanted e-mail sent to strangers. The odd term has its origins in a Monty Python sketch which features Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam. Now that’s one recipe I can do without!
Susan Ives is famous for her bourbon balls, which have made the December Alamo PC board of directors meeting a jolly affair enjoyed by all. |