Online Recipe Finders

Betsey Blanche — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:05:00 GMT

Although I am a lover of food and cooking, I have found that, much to my chagrin, I am terribly unimaginative in the kitchen. I need direction. I need a list of ingredients and clear instructions on how to put them all together. In other words, I rely on recipes. Luckily we have access to all kinds of great recipes. For starters (no pun intended) the library has a great collection of cookbooks (Nonfiction 641). I’m always impressed by the variety and breadth available there.

Sadly, in addition to not being a very creative cook, I’m also not a champion of planning ahead (terrible combination). So I sometimes find myself at home with the urge to cook but in need of some guidance. This is when I turn to sites like allrecipes.com, The Food Network online, or Epicurious. These are tried and true favorites which let you search through recipes, view comments and reviews, and sometimes even view nutrition information. Luckily sites like these continue to add features which make them even more valuable. In addition to these favorites I have recently discovered the sharp-looking, featured-filled site Yummly.

In Yummly, users can set up a profile which helps narrow down searches. You can add diet and allergy information; favorite and least favorite foods; information about where you like to shop; how much you can spend on your at-home meals; and how much time food takes to prepare. This feature is nice because it still allows you to search for specific meals or foods but it also provides the FoodFinder which lists recipes that meet your specific tastes and needs. Yummly also has a social feature which allows you to share recipes with your “friends” on the site. It will be interesting to see what other recipe sites emerge over the next year or so.

Have a favorite recipe book or cooking site? Feel free to add it to the comments section!

Other cooking tools:

Convert Center (change units to suit your cooking needs).

Bing Recipes (recipe searching provided by the search engine Bing).

This Week's Technology Tip: Take a Break from Technology?

Betsey Blanche — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:02:00 GMT

Last week Stephen Colbert interviewed Nicholas Carr – author of the newly-released book . Three days ago I came across a blog post titled “Do You Purposely, Regulary Go Offline?” Today, to top things off, I read a brief synopsis of a study which shows more than two hours per day of screen time (particularly watching TV or playing video games) can have negative impacts on one’s attention span. It’s worth mentioning that all three of these were online interactions. This got me thinking about how we use technology and the negative and positive effect it can have on us.

In this blog I make it a goal to provide some tips on tools created to make our lives easier and more productive. What Nicholar Carr and the others show is that sometimes maximizing productivity requires disconnecting from the Internet. In Nicholas Carr’s 2008 essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr writes “In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas.” With this in mind, I present this week’s technology tip for increasing productivity and quality of life: take some time to unplug and focus on one task for an extended period of time. Maybe start by reading Carr’s new book (located in our New Non-fiction section), or by perusing some of the excellent book recommendations in Linda’s blog Reader’s Exchange.

Perhaps this is a bad message for the technology blog writer but I think it’s a great thing to be aware of. Plus, you could use those long periods of reading or contemplation to win great prizes through our Adult Summer Reading Program!

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Online Recipe Finders

This Week's Technology Tip: Take a Break from Technology?