I've mentioned food in passing in previous columns, but haven't devoted a full column to it. I think that the most prevalent aspect of food on the web is the hundreds, if not thousands, of recipe collection sites. I'll cover a few of them, but first, I'll discuss some other kinds of food-related sites.
Many restaurants have their own web sites. At a minimum, you can expect to find hours of operation, an address and a phone number, but often, you can get directions and maps, partial or full menus, future events, recipes or even make reservations on the web. I've done the latter at www.bexleymonk.com, a Columbus restaurant that is owned by an in-law of an in-law. For an example of a website for a local restaurant chain, try www.winkinglizard.com.
Many consider wine an indispensible part of dinner. There are many wineries in Ohio. Catherine and I have made a hobby of travelling around the state visiting them. Many of them have websites, quite similar in function to restaurant websites. As an example, Harpersfield Vineyard has a small, but very effective site at www.rinestock.com/harpersfield/. Although the location may look off the beaten path, it actually on the southwest edge of the densest concentration of wineries in the state. There are a dozen wineries in the region from just southwest of Geneva to Conneaut. We like to take at least one long weekend each year to visit this area and we will often have Friday lunch at Harpersfield, dining on French cheeses, homemade bread and Ohio wine.
Before I leave the subject of wines, I want to mention Anthony Hawkins' Winegrape Glossary, on-line at www.stratsplace.com/hawkins/wgg.html. If you have any interest at all in the varieties of grapes used to make wine, you'll want to visit here. Other Strat's Place pages are dedicated to wine, gardening and the arts - an eclectic place.
Commercial food sites that sell specialty groceries, drink, spices, or books and magazines related to food are also very common and can be quite helpful. These sites may offer recipes featuring their offerings, for instance. A few of many possible examples are www.cooksillustrated.com (magazine), www.penzeys.com (spice vendor) and www.ethnicgrocer.com (specialty foods). We've purchaced from the first two companies, but not from the last site. Caveat emptor!
Epicurious is run by magazine publisher Conte' Nast - their food connection is Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines. They are a general food and drink site, but they also feature over 13,000 recipes, categorized and cross-referenced. This site might be the best first stop when you're just getting started exploring food on the web. They offer a huge collection of reference materials, including restaurant reviews, technique videos, an etiquette guide and a comprehensive food dictionary based on Sharon Tyler Herbst's excellent "The Food Lover's Companion, 2nd edition". They also sell all sorts of things, including dinner kits! It is a very extensive and impressive site.
Similar to the food dictionary at Epicurious, at www.foodsubs.com, you can find "Cook's Thesaurus". If you need to deal with an ingredient you're not familiar with or can't find, this can be a helpful site. Two useful features it offers are pictures of most things it discusses and substitution guides.
You can find Arielle's Recipe Archives at recipes.alastra.com. It appears to be a collection of recipes gleaned from various USENET newsgroups related to food. It is vast and impressive, but you should be aware that this and other recipe archives reproduce recipes that have been posted to the web. They generally haven't been proofread or kitchen-tested. I've occasionally seen ridiculous errors in collections like this (inedible amounts of Habenero pepper in a Mexican recipe, or cups of flour rather than tablespoons, for example), so be aware of the possibility of typos in any recipe you might get from this kind of site.
Another on-line archive of recipes can be found at RecipeSource, www.recipesource.com. This used to be called "SOAR: The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes" and has been around for a while. It is undergoing an interface upgrade at the moment, but still looks quite usable, categorizing foods by ethnic type and/or type of dish. I tried searching for "Carne Adovada" and found three recipes. They also offer a "plain text" mode so that you can easily save and print recipes you're interested in.
A few other places that I've looked at recently that you might want to try are www.thelovechef.com, www.kitchenlink.com, www.easygourmetrecipes.com, and www.washingtongourmet.com. Then try looking on your own; type in the name of a favorite recipe into a search engine and then explore the sites that you find.
Postscript: I tried another recipe site the other day. When I looked at the recipe, it called for two pounds of meat. When I printed it, the printed version called for one ounce (no other quantity changed). You have to really watch for stuff like that. For the curious, the recipe was "Gizzard Stew".
CATBAR - Brain Candy #49 - Food n' Drink / Brian Rock / Sep 12 2001