Better Health & Living
What’s Cooking on the Web
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Have you had it up to here with the same old chicken recipe? Do you find yourself nodding off into your turkey meat loaf, despite the tang of chili sauce? If your healthy eating plan is suffering from a case of the blahs, finding recipes on the Web could be just the thing to put some zing back into your meals.
The Internet has the world’s largest cooking collection—millions of recipes, food blogs, cooking Web sites, and newsletters. You can find a different way to fix breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the year. Many of the sites have healthy cooking sections and recipes for special-diet meals, such as low fat, low carb, and low salt. So when your family wants to know what’s for dinner, let your computer help you cook up something delicious and good for you.
Food and Cooking Web Sites
www.foodnetwork.com.
Go to the Get Healthy section for recipes to fit all your needs: low calorie, low cholesterol, low carbohydrate, low fat, vegetarian, plus a whole grains guide. Some recipe examples: Chipotle Shrimp Taco with Avocado Salsa Verde, Carrot-Almond Soup, and Asian Chicken Salad. Yum! You can also find collections from chefs on Food Network shows, including Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, and Paula Deen. If you’re learning to cook, or want to improve your technique, check out the video selections for tips on how to roll dough or beat egg whites. The site also features recipes of the day and an e-mail recipe newsletter.
www.allrecipes.com.
Here you’ll find one of the Web’s largest collections of recipes. You can search thousands of recipes by type, keyword, ingredients, or prep time. You can also e-mail a recipe to a friend or compile a shopping list on the site. As a member (registration is free), you get your own virtual recipe box where you can save your favorites and even attach notes. There’s also a great online community. Try recipes from the Healthy Living section, such as Poppy Seed and Banana Muffins, and Broccoli Slaw with Dried Cranberries and Pistachios.
www.recipezaar.com.
This site has more than 150,000 recipes and 36,000 photos posted by members of their large cookbook and cooking online community. You can search the collection by course, main ingredient, cuisine, preparation difficulty, occasion, or dietary criteria. The dietary section has dishes for special dietary needs: diabetic, gluten-free, lactose-free, egg-free, high fiber, high calcium, high protein, low calorie, low cholesterol, low fat, low salt, or low carbs. Favorite recipes include Parmesan-Crusted Broiled Scallops, and Pasta with Creamy Red Pepper Sauce.
www.betterrecipes.com.
Created by the Meredith Corporation, publisher of Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies Home Journal, this site features collections such as healthy vegetarian recipes, pasta, and grilled foods. Become a member by filling out a free profile—to enter recipe contests and share your recipes with others.
Searching and Blogging for Recipes
www.mycookingblog.com.
Sponsored by cdkitchen.com, this site allows visitors to create their own cooking and food blogs—Web journals where you can post your ideas online, create your own cookbooks, and define your recipe categories. There are several templates to help you set up your own blog. Browse through their list of current blogs and find treasures like the Daily Blog, with more than 600 entries since 2005.
www.google.com.
Googling for dinner? Sure! One of the neat things people are doing now is looking in their pantries to see what ingredients they have on hand, then doing a Google search to find recipes that use those items. For example, you may have pasta, tuna, and mushrooms. When you do a Google search for “recipes, pasta, tuna, mushrooms,” you’ll end up with recipes for all sorts of tuna casseroles, tuna salads, and even tuna lasagna. Using more specific terms will give you a smaller, but more applicable, group of recipes. You can also add keywords such as “broil” or “grill” to refine the search and yield more healthful recipes.
Web Recipe Tips
- Bookmark your favorite recipe sites in a separate folder on your hard drive. To set up a folder, open the Favorites menu, select Add to Favorites and then New Folder which you can name Recipes.
- Many sites have a feature that lets you print the recipes so they’ll fit on cards. You can choose this option and then glue the printouts onto 4-x-6 cards to keep in your files, or print them on 4-x-6 photo paper.
- Look for sites that have online recipe boxes, so you can store recipes to use at a later date.
- Check the ratings. Often, sites let their visitors (and their members) rate recipes—so you can pick the ones that have gotten the best reviews.
- Starting a food blog is a good way to collect favorite family recipes and pass them on to the next generation.
Eileen Buckholtz is an Internet consultant, professor of e-business in the MBA program for the University of Phoenix Online.
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