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Sites for cyberfoodies
Is your computer keyboard full of food crumbs? Is food your passion and/or your major vice? Do you like to actually prepare food, or savor recipes with your eyes, or both?
Many of us, for better or worse, are foodies with our sometimes-sticky fingers on a mouse. Happily, sites with culinary appeal abound on the Net. Point, click and salivate. And have a bit of fun.
For starters take the Foodie Quiz at http://www.forfoodies.com/html/foodiequiz.html to see if you are a "fair-weather feeder, occasional omnivore, debonair diner, blossoming bon vivant or expert foodie." Sample question: "What is durian? a) a pungent, chalky Basque cheese, or b) a spiky, stinky large fruit from a Malaysian tree, or c) a product used to make countertops? (Apparently, durian is a fruit that smells horrible but tastes delicious.) See http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues99/sep99/durian.html for more details. Or try the Fabulous Foods trivia quiz at http://www.fabulousfoods.com/cgi-bin/quiz/quirex.cgi and learn all types of food facts, such as "Jaggery is a dark, coarse, unrefined sugar," or "Koumiss is a fermented, slightly alcoholic beverage made from horse or camel milk."
The Epicurious Web site at http://www.epicurious.com is a wonderful cyber stop for foodies, with its collection of recipes from Gourmet, Bon Appetit and other magazines. The advanced search feature on the recipe page (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/) allows you to focus on your menu requirements. How about a recipe for a one-dish meal made with shellfish? Or a meatless Italian side dish? Or even a quick "no cook" dessert without nuts? Perhaps your food interests are a bit more prosaic and you want recipes for kitchen clones of American brand-name foods. Try the Top Secret Recipes homepage at http://www.topsecretrecipes.com/home.asp and you'll find a number of recipes labeled as "free" for the taking. (All others cost money.) Go ahead and whip up a batch of Reese's ® Peanut Butter Cups, or Fritos® Hot Bean Dip, or even Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies®.
Maybe you need to learn basic cooking techniques because, for the most part, you are a restaurant foodie. Head back to the Epicurious Web site, which has a great selection of short technique videos at http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/how_to/video/. Learn how to frost a cake, make a rolled omelet, patch a pie crust, make gravy and more. Or perhaps you need to surf on to other sites for basic information, such as Ingredient Substitutions at http://lancaster.unl.edu/food/ftfeb01.htm or Approximate Storage Times at http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/FNTR2/L806.PDF for food in your cupboard or refrigerator.
And, of course, if you are a hard-core foodie, you will want to use the Web to learn a bit of culinary history. The Food Timeline site at http://www.foodtimeline.org/ doesn't look especially attractive but it is loaded with culinary history as pulled together by Lynne Olver, a reference librarian in Morris County, New Jersey. Her essay, "How to Research Your Favorite Foods" (http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaqa.html), is full of valuable advice for culinary historians. Or for those with a more casual interest, browsing the many links found on http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaqindex.html is fascinating. For example, you can learn the history of such iconic American sandwiches as the club sandwich, the BLT, the Reuben, peanut butter and jelly, the Dagwood, sloppy joes, the Philly cheese steak, the Monte Cristo, and more. Or you can explore the history of baby food, school lunches, meal times, ancient Egyptian cookery, soup kitchens, restaurant menus and medieval feasts, to mention only a small sampling.
Finally, a trip to The Food Museum Online at http://www.foodmuseum.com/ is essential before you can truly establish your cyberfoodie credentials. An entire world opens as you discover the world of food blogs! From the Food Museum's own blog at http://foodmuseum.typepad.com/food_museum_blog/ you are sent to its other recommended food blog links, such as The Accidental Hedonist (http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/) and Too Many Chefs (http://www.toomanychefs.net/). And believe it or not, on the Food Museum's favorite links page (http://www.foodmuseum.com/links.html), you will find Kiplog's FoodBlog (http://www.kiplog.com/food/foodlinks.htm), a comprehensive listing of food blogs. The Food Museum liberally sprinkles food writer M.F.K. Fisher's famous quote, "First we eat, then we do everything else," throughout its pages.
With all the food information on the Web, one might say, "First you surf and then if you find the time you might grab a bite to eat!"
—Gemma DeVinney, University Libraries