Geeky Cat Miusings

I have been using epicurious.com to search for recipes since I first connected to the internet - I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced almonds. On occasion, I could not find what I was looking for, so I would try to search the Web for a specific recipe or a recipe containing certain specific ingredients, and the search would usually take a lot of time with much frustration and not always positive results.

But now I have found a clever site - Foodieview - that searches the major recipe sites for recipes matching the criteria you specify and saves any recipes in one central place (with links to the original site). You can browse by different categories such as main ingredients, special considerations (like dairy-free, low fat, veg), holiday/occasion, cuisine, and you can also specify that the recipe should be from some famous chef (i.e., Nigella Lawson). For example, I entered the following in the search box: category:Italian category:vegetarian category:beans category:top_rated and Foodview returned 40 results. I always find other people’s feedback on a recipe very useful to determine if the recipe is worth pursuing. Will the dish taste good? Is it easy? Do they recommend modifications? Fortunately, Foodieview provides a star rating for the recipes and my choice, Winter Vegetable and Bean Soup with Pesto received 4½ stars from 49 reviews. I think that is a good indicator that I should go ahead and make the hearty soup.

An additional feature: the Recipe Box has a quick link to social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us so that you can share your favourite recipes with others.

Buono appetito!