Quicklinks
Posted by kathryn in Breakfast
- Asparagus & haloumi: A lovely idea from Food Lover’s Journey – asparagus with tomato salsa, haloumi & rocket. And just look at Anh’s photographs.
- Olive oil muffins: I’m intrigued by Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for olive oil muffins. They have citrus zest, almonds and balsamic vinegar. I’m going to try these out soon.
- Measuring your waist: Here in Australia there’s a new government health campaign, focussed on checking your waist measurement. You can see the advert and read all the information at the Measure Up website.
- Food diaries: I’ve written before about the benefits of keeping a food diary. Now there’s news of a study showing how it can help with weight loss. Thanks to Sue for sending me the article.
- Fast food: An article on the Forbes magazine website takes a look at where fast food really comes from. It’s not pleasant reading and the results are not conclusive, but an interesting perspective on the complexities of the food chain.
Allrecipes
A few weeks ago I went to the launch of Allrecipes in Australia.
I’ve been aware of Allrecipes for a while – they always return high in Google search results. The site allows you to store your own recipes, search for others, rate recipes and connect with people who have similar food interests.
It’s a big resource – a few simple searches bring up hundreds and thousands of results. So it’s another place to go if you’re unsure what to cook.
The site is all user generated and there’s quite a variation in the quality of recipes and instructions.
In terms of health value – there’s a “Healthy” category, which is in the “Special Diets” group (am I the only one who thinks this is strange?). There are over a thousand recipes in this category. Although I would question the healthy-ness of some – a consequence of the site’s user-generated content.
There are also recipe collections for people with food intolerances – nut, egg, gluten, dairy and shellfish.
Have any of you used Allrecipes? How have you found it?
Photograph by Jek in the box.
14 November, 2008
Comments
Those olive oil muffins do look good! I made olive oil brownies once and they came out very lovely and moist with a more complex taste than normal brownies.
Personally, I’ve never been impressed at all by Allrecipes. The majority of recipes on the US site does not meet my definition of cooking; mostly the recipes contain loads of processed rubbish ingredients. Based on my own welimited experience, Americans prepare meals with a lot more convenience/proceessed ingredients than we do in Australia. Hopefully the Aus site will reflect this.
My favourite recipe source is Food Blog search as it only searches the food blogs, thankfully the vast majority of food bloggers use ‘real’ ingredients. Otherwise, I like Taste.com.au; much better website than recipefinder.com.au which I don’t bother with at all anymore.
Thank you for posting the link about the food diary research. I am working on an article at the moment about food diaries and this is great feed for the fire.
Re AllRecipes. I’ve used it, but I use Recipezaar even more, simply because it has more recipes. I’ve only just discovered Food Blog Search and while it’s okay, it doesn’t quite cover the gamut.
It’s an interesting subject though – what is THE best recipe website for foodies? There are so many… Epicurean… AllRecipes… Recipezaar… someone needs to do a comparative review!
Lolfitness – welcome and thanks for the olive oil muffin info. A local restaurant makes olive oil and rosemary cake and gosh it’s good – the olive oil flavour really shines through.
Emily & Monica – the best recipe websites is an interesting topic – and it’s very personal. I agree with you about the US Allrecipes site, although the Australian site does seem to have more real ingredients and better reflect how we cook over here.
I personally use taste.com.au a lot. I also quite like cuisine.com.au – although more for ideas and inspiration than actual cooking. And yes Food Blog Search is also a favourite.
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