|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
| COOKING UP A WEBSTORM | |||
It's hard to believe, but cooks are of the niftiest website creators around. After a couple of days' browsing, we found a biscuit trail leading to almost two million cyberkitchens. Here are the ones you need to know about. |
A day-long journey across the World Wide Web could be fun but it's also costly. So rather tear out this page and stick it onto your fridge - so every time you need to do something other than heat up a tin of baked beans, you can refer to this list of food and cookery shortcuts. Just add an LG Electronics Internet fridge to the mix and you'll be a gourmet chef before you can say 'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!'
If it's tried-and-trusted recipes you're after, stick to the really big sites - such as food24.co.za, which is packed with recipes from SA's leading family and woman's magazines. You're guaranteed to find the ingredients for even the most exotic recipes on this site, right here on home ground (which is often the hitch with international food sites like epicurious.com and finecooking.com).
If you're a stickler for a specific diet, you can be sure there'll be a website that'll cater to your needs. Vegans can go to vegan.com, vegetarians to vegweb.com, raw-food fundies to living-food.com, the gluten-intolerant to celiac.com. For everything else, from macrobiotic recipes to diabetic-friendly ones, there's kitchenlink.com.
There are cookery tools galore on the Web, but start with basic ones like creating an online recipe book, grocery list or meal planner, or using a measurement converter on food24.co.za. Here you'll also find step by step cooking instructions, tips galore, ecards, food and wine substitutes, foodie events, you can subscribe to the weekly, free newsletter, listings of gourmet shops, cookery classes and the top 800 restaurants in SA.
Other sites with handy recipe organising tools - like how long meat or poultry should cook before it's safe to eat - can be found at foodfit.com.
Or try the recipe calorie counter under 'Cooking 101' on foodtv. com (where you can also watch cooking demos), a substitution calculator at mastercook.com, a microwave conversion calculator at microwavecookingforone.com, step-by-step instructions at allrecipes.com, cooking shortcuts at busycooks.com, and a food dictionary at epicurious.com - phew!
Of course, eating isn't only about food. Maybe you'd like to know which wines to serve with a meal? Go to turningleaf.com and click on 'Appreciating Wine', where you'll find the 'Food and Wine Paring' wheel.
At cyber-kitchen.com you'll find a host of links to cookery humour on the Web, such as to the 'Curry Monster', the 'Diary of the mad Private Investigator Cook' and a tongue-in-cheek 'History of Cooking'.
For those who love international cuisine and cookery tours, cuisineinternational.com is simply yummy. But if you're after a specific country's cooking, it's best to type in the country's name and the word 'recipes' on a search engine. Finally, bookmark worldculinaryinstitute.com, asiacuisine.com and gourmetsa.com to keep on top of what's happening in the world of food on the Web and on the ground.
If you haven't tried it, shopping online at inthebag.co.za (Woolworths), pnp.co.za (Pick 'n Pay) and even Thrupps.co.za (only in Gauteng) couldn't be more convenient. What you spend on delivery, you save on stress.
For wine, cybercellar.co.za is one of SA's most efficient online wine merchants. And, if you're looking for a recipe book, go to kalahari.net, type in 'cookery' and off you go. Easy as pie.
| story by Laura van Niekerk from women24 | |
| image by a webstorm | |
