"A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness." Elsa Schiaparelli

A passion of mine that I speak about often and use as analogies in my computer training is cooking. Whether it is a comparison to holding a good knife to using the mouse or the difference between Word and Excel (stir fry Vs. Baking) I am always up for a new cooking/recipe site. Thanks to Lifehacker I discovered the site Supercook. Now I do use my cookbooks frequently and foodie websites as well to give me new inspiration for the next meal but this particular site does something very different than the others. You input all the foods you have in the fridge and pantry and then it spits out a huge amounts of recipes. You have the option of choosing specific foods to be in your next meal. As an example I told it I wanted to cook with some spinach, it needed to be cooked or tossed, and then it went through all the other ingredients that I had and gave me a rather nice Spinach Pasta Pie recipe. It tells you if you have all the ingredients. It will also make ingredient suggestions to get the next time. There is even a printout grocery list. Everything about the site is easy and smooth. I heartily recommend it. Give it a try.

“I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with variation.” Jehane Benoit

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows that my entire life is in pursuit of the next meal. I sometimes have (want) to cook that meal but where do I search for a recipe besides my cookbooks? I usually head to Google to start and get hit with a bunch of irrelevant sites and then I end up at a site like Epicurous or Food network. I recently tried FoodieView. It is a recipe search engine. It searches most of the major recipe sites like Google but it pulls out the junk stuff. I like this cooking search engine but I do have a couple of gripes. No matter what I search I seem to get recipes from the same site first. This is not bad as long as you really like recipezaar. A quick pull down list of all of the sites it searches would be easy and would be a nice feature. Their cooking resources page is nice for discovering some sites that may need to be gone through for future cooking. If you have a meal to get ready give this one try.

“My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor” Phyllis Diller

Cooking and food are obsessions of mine. I love to go to recipe sites and see what there is to be made and then finally eaten. Sites with recipes and the ability to rate them has been out there for a long time. Bigoven however seems to mix the web 2.0 and cooking idea perfectly. They allow sharing and posting of recipes and they have some really wonderful other features.
I started to summarize they are all about and then I realized I could not interpret it easier than they put it. Head on over and give it a try.

• Search 160,000+ recipes and see ratings and tips from other cooks
• Enter ingredients you've got in your fridge and find out what you can make
• Find out what's freshest now
• Publish your favorite recipes online -- get photos and tips
• Get your free cooking page on the Internet that keeps track of your favorites
• Easily tag and link recipes together -- suggest pairings or use of leftovers
• Create your own "Try Soon" list -- never again be stuck for dinner
• Suggest recipes for your friends, earn cooking medals... much more!

“Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.” Thomas Fuller

Another Thanksgiving is under our belt (both figuratively and literally) and it is time to figure out what to do with all the leftovers. Last year I provided a site that had a list of recipes and help. This year it seems appropriate to keep up the tradition. I personally recommend a leftover party for everyone. I also ask people to bring the carcass if they are going to get rid of it so I can make a turkey stock out of it. As far as the actual meat and the rest of the dinner CdKitchen seems to have our backs with a long list of recipes. Everything is segmented into categories for all your grand turkey experiences. As far as party ideas head to Better Homes and Gardens for all sorts of ideas. So when you have finally digested the first meal and getting ready for the next give this one a try.