Note: Click the name to hide/expand each section.
Local Links
- 100 Dishes to Eat in Alabama Before You Die (PDF Download Link) - A document of the top one hundred best dishes from my fair state to eat before you die. :)
- Birmingham Dining - A great independent guide to local restaurants and eateries around Birmingham, Alabama
- Birmingham Menus - Birmingham Alabama restaurant dining guide featuring menus, catering information, and more for locally owned restaurants.
- Bluegatco - Southern Cooking, Southern Food, Southern Travel
- Chef Bob, Trussville Cafe - The Trussville Cafe offers deep south cruisine hosted by Chef Bob Vaningan located in the Trussville Antique Mall.
- Chef Donnell Johnson - Catering, ice carving, personal chef - Chef Johnson is a member of the American Culinary Federation, Birmingham Chapter. Chef Johnson has experience in high volume food service including retail, healthcare, and sporting events.
- Costa’s - Famous BBQ, Italian food, and more
- Culinard - The Culinary Institute of Virginia College, one of the country’s premier cooking schools. Website has recipes. Culinard also caters!
- Doodles - Local Cajun eatery: Muffulettas, Po-boys, Red Beans and Rice, Jambalaya, as well as Pizza, Hamburgers, Ice Cream, and more!
- Franklin’s Homewood Gourmet - Great local eatery, extensive catering menu as well as weekly cooking classes
- Free The Hops - Alabamians For Specialty Beer - Activism for the Gourmet Beer Bill up for vote in April here in Alabama.
- Mr. Recipe - Good Day Alabama’s own Mr. Recipe bringing the best recipes from area chefs and restaurants.
- My Recipes - Easily find any recipe you need at MyRecipes.com. From dinner tonight and party favorites to healthy diet selections, get the most popular recipes, best chicken and beef recipes, and every course from appetizer to dessert, plus menus, meal plans, and shop
- Southern Food and Beverage Museum - The Southern Food and Beverage Museum is a nonprofit organization based in New Orleans, dedicated to the discovery, understanding and celebration of the culture of food and drink in the South. Besides the museum, SoFAB has traveling exhibits and collects
- The Fish Market - Quality Southern foods, delicious seafood, and a touch of Greek. You can’t find eats this good anywhere else!
Seasonal
- Annie’s Gingerbread Page - Full of cute designs, anecdotes, crafts, yummy recipes, and other neat things, Annie’s site is sure to please any gingerbread fan!
- How to Carve a Turkey - This article by the New York Times is a helpful step-by-step on the best way to carve up your Thanksgiving bird.
- Make the Perfect Wired Holiday Party Drinks - Wired magazine’s how-to list of holiday drinks, each accompanied by a brief descriptive history of the drink.
- Make your own fall spice blends - Courtesy of Nicole at Baking Bites, Recipes for Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices and includes tips for tweaking those recipes according to your particular tastes.
- The Ultimate Guide to Cooking a Thanksgiving Turkey - Startcooking’s Ultimate Guide to Cooking a Turkey, a great primer to those of us who have never cooked a turkey before and/or aren’t sure where to start.
- Tip for postal mailing cookies - Possibly the best suggestion for mailing those cookies out for the holidays!
- Tips for shipping holiday baked goods - Baking Bites’ helpful tips and advice for shipping and mailing your holiday goodies.
- Wanda’s Halloween Cookbook - A very cute site decorated in a Halloween motif, featuring decorating tips and all kinds of spooky recipes for Halloween.
Food Blogs
- 101 Cookbooks - An excellent recipe-based food blog . You can browse recipes by type (appetizers, baked good, mains, etc.)
- 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet! - Weight loss support website, forums, recipes, diet reviews by 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet
- Blog Appetit - Guaranteed Fresh Food News, Muse and Views with Recipes
- Chopstick Beaten Eggs - A neat food blog with tasty selected ramblings.
- Chopstick Cinema - Celeste Heiter’s Daily Adventures in Asian Food and Film.
- Cindy’s Kitchen - (English link) a great food blog with many French/European dishes
- Cook and Eat - A lovely food blog which features rich photos to go along with the recipes!
- Cooking for 2 - A very nice-looking blog specializing in recipes for singles and couples who only cook/eat 2 servings.
- Cooking with Amy - A food blog: read it and eat
- Fast Foodie - Tried and true recipes for after work.
- His And Hers Restaurant Guide - His and Hers perspectives on where they dine every night, what’s cooking, food they love, and cook books. Have a cumulative 50 years dining in the best restaurants in the world!
- Jumbo Empanadas - Chronicling one Canadian girls’ adventures in cooking and eating, with a little witty banter and a pinch of salt thrown in for good measure.
- Kilgore’s Kitchen - Self-described as “a relucatant American who’s happily living in the UK”, she has a wonderful “Food of the Day” and recipe blog.
- Orangette - a blog-style collection of stories, often autobiographical and always gastronomical
- Peanut Butter Étouffee…and other food oddities - A wonderful food/recipes blog with a great sense of humor and handy kitchen tips!
- Recipe Town - A very nice looking culinary community and recipe blog site.
- Recipes from a [Gluten Free] Goddess - an artist who loves to cook & blog recipes [that just so happen to be gluten-free].
- Retro Food - a bit of food, a lot of fun, and oh yeah, vintage cookbooks and retro cooking.
- Slashfood - A very nice food blog.
- Taquitos.net - A great site which reviews various snack foods: chips, pretzels, popcorn, candies, cookies, and even fast food items! A good read, very down to Earth.
- Thai & Lao Food - A Thai / Laos girl, Manivan Larprom shows you how to cook Thai & Lao food through her videos. Her authentic cuisine roots from Sakon Nakhon, Thailand and Paksan, Laos.
- The Barmy Baker - An excellent foodie blog with inventive recipes and a great sense of humor!
- The Breakfast Blog - Very nice foodie blog! Every post is dedicated to breakfast at some restaurant in and around London, England, with a cute little breakfast-food rating system.
- The Passionate Cook - Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
- The Traveler’s Lunchbox - Food, travel, and more food…
- Three Martini Lunch - A philosophy of life and food based on a lost age
- Tigers & Strawberries - a food blog by Barbara Fisher
- TriniGourmet - Mouthwatering Trinidadian “Fusion” Recipes and International Cuisine
- Well Fed Network - a compilation of blogs focused on informed, high quality, food-based content. We endeavor to provide our readers with reliable information and opinions with a strong level of trust.
Cooking and Recipes
- All Things Southern - Home style Southern cooking
- Annie’s Gingerbread Page - Full of cute designs, anecdotes, crafts, yummy recipes, and other neat things, Annie’s site is sure to please any gingerbread fan!
- BakeSpace - A place for cookers and cakers. Recipe swap and social networking website for foodies.
- Bees Online Cookbook - BeesOnline, a café and honey factory just outside Auckland, NZ. Great honey recipes.
- Better Recipes Wiki - A place for devoted food fans to share their cooking tips, disaster stories, favorite cookbooks, wines, and more.
- BiteClub - The BiteClub is a Community for Bar Hoppers and Foodies, a lifestyle social network for those interested in the restaurant and bar industry.
- Cheap Cooking - Get some frugal tips for cutting back on your grocery bill, cheap and easy recipes, menu planning ideas, shopping hints, frugal living ideas, and a downloadable grocery list and price book.
- Chow - Browse through recipes by sides, main dish, sweets and drinks. Also has insightful video section with a good selection of videos on cooking and food etiquette how-to`s and so forth
- Cook’s Country - Cook’s Country - Recipes That Work
- Cook’s Recipes - A cooking and recipe site with recipes for every cook
- Cooking for 2 - A very nice-looking blog specializing in recipes for singles and couples who only cook/eat 2 servings.
- Cooking For Engineers - Analytically cooking explained.
- CopyKat Recipes - Home of the web’s most exciting recipes. You have tried it in the restaurant, now make it at home and we will show you how.
- Cream Puffs in Venice - Making your food dreams come true
- Desperation Dinners - Quick and easy recipes that taste good — the answer to every busy cook’s prayers!
- Dr. Gourmet - Your free source for healthy recipes from Dr. Gourmet. Diet plans, nutrition information, and what you need to know to eat healthy.
- Famous Recipes - World Famous Recipes for all occasions.
- Flower Carole - Free fruit smoothie recipes. A natural, healthy way to enhance your diet.
- Food Channel - Articles, news bits, and what else — recipes!
- Food Geeks - online community designed for food geeks to share recipes and information about cooking and ingredients
- Group Recipes - The World’s most advanced recipe site and food social network.
- Hillbilly Housewife - The focus here is on low-cost, home-cooking from scratch. The recipes are all tested in a real kitchen with hungry children, stalking cats, begging puppies and a playful husband underfoot. The ingredients are affordable and readily available in most are
- Kitchen Universe - New recipes with a twist
- My Adventures in the Breadbox - Alice’s adventure in the kitchen
- Not by Bread Alone: America’s Culinary Heritage - This site explores the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years. Once an exhibit at Cornell University the site remains as a resource with a wealth of information highlighting rare books, photographs,
- Old Fashioned Cooking - Thousands of old-fashioned recipes from vintage cookbooks.
- Simply recipes - Elise’s website of recipes, food, and cooking. Great stories accompany most recipes and she always posts the most interesting online cooking/bakeware (shopping!) deals.
- Slow Cooker Recipes - Slow Cooker Recipes and Crockpot Recipes
- SmoothieWeb.com - Free recipes for fruit smoothies and healthy drinks. A lovely repository for smoothie recipes, smoothie blenders and everything smoothie related.
- So-You-Wanna’s Food and Drink Index - A lot of humor with a little knowledge, mixed with food and drinks.
- Start Cooking - Start Cooking is all about learning the absolute basics of cooking, with short cooking videos and step-by-step photo tutorials.
- The Amateur Gourmet - He doesn’t have da street cred, just got da appetite.
- The Domestic Goddess - The Goddess’ Recipe Archive
- The Gumbo Pages - Creole and Cajun recipes
- The Science of Cooking - Recipes, activities, and webcasts that will enhance the understanding of the science behind food and cooking.
- Wayne Watchers’ Favorite Recipes - A support site for Weight Watchers members by Wayne Muhlstein, a Weight Watchers Group Leader.
- Weight Watchers Member Support Group Recipes - all the recipes ever posted to the WWMSG yahoogroup
Culinary Schools
- Atlanta Culinary School - Start your culinary arts career education at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Atlanta Georgia. This culinary school offers the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu curriculum. Our hands-on training in food preparation and classical French cooking techniq
- California Culinary Academy - Looking for a cooking school? California Culinary Academy offers a Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Program, hospitality career training, restaurant management career training, as well as cooking classes and career training in culinary arts.
- California School of Culinary Arts - Train for your career at California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena. Le Cordon Bleu Programs in culinary arts, pâtisserie and baking, and hotel and restaurant management.
- College of Culinary Arts Miami - Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts - Miami, Florida offers culinary arts training programs in Florida.
- Culinary Arts Minneapolis - Considering a culinary arts career? The professional culinary arts training that we provide can give you a taste of success at our Minnesota based cooking school. Students can earn the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu Diplôme at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culin
- Hollywood Kitchen Academy - If you have been thinking about a career in the culinary arts and are looking for a high-quality, fast way to get there, then you have come to the right place. Kitchen Academy’s team of instructors has developed a unique program based entirely on hands-o
- Institute of Culinary Arts Dallas - Located in Texas´s top tourist destination, Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts Dallas provides Le Cordon Bleu culinary training and can help prepare students for opportunities in the food service and hospitality industry.
- Las Vegas Culinary School - Looking for a Le Cordon Bleu culinary arts college in Las Vegas? Try the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Las Vegas! Our programs represent a union of the finest European and North American culinary arts training programs available today. Contact
- Orlando Culinary Academy - Orlando Culinary Academy offers professional Le Cordon Bleu culinary training in Orlando, FL. Students can select between Culinary Arts, Patisserie & Baking, and Hospitality & Restaurant Management training. Learn more about our culinary school.
- Pennsylvania Culinary Institute - Learn culinary arts from a quality program. Pennsylvania Culinary Institute offers a range of culinary training programs, all bearing the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu seal of approval This quality cooking school is located in Pittsburgh, PA.
- Sacramento Kitchen Academy - If you have been thinking about a career in the culinary arts and are looking for a high-quality, fast way to get there, then you have come to the right place. Kitchen Academy’s team of instructors has developed a unique program based entirely on hands-o
- Scottsdale Culinary Institute OR - Scottsdale Culinary Institute, Arizona based cooking school, offers culinary degree program areas and baking and pastry training.
- Texas Culinary Academy - Prepare for your culinary career at Texas Culinary Academy. Our cooking school in Austin, Texas remains the only Le Cordon Bleu affiliated culinary school in Texas. Our Le Cordon Bleu Programs include quality cooking classes and training in culinary arts,
- The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago - Your culinary arts career training begins at CHIC. This Chicago culinary school offers the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu curriculum. Hands-on training in food preparation and hospitality management help prepare students for successful careers in the culina
- Western Culinary Institute - Looking for a culinary arts school in the Pacific Northwest? At the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon you can earn a Le Cordon Bleu diplôme along with your degree or certificate. We offer Le Cordon Bleu Programs in the culinary arts, pâti
Food Funnies
- My Wife Abuses Our Melons - A humorous article about a woman who’s figured out how to turn mediocre cantaloupes into great ones!
Cuteness and Kid-Friendly
- Annie’s Gingerbread Page - Full of cute designs, anecdotes, crafts, yummy recipes, and other neat things, Annie’s site is sure to please any gingerbread fan!
- Aunt Libby’s Kids’ Stuff - A large collection of kid-friendly recipes.
- Cooking with Monkey! - He’s cute AND he cooks!
- Dole 5 a Day - Recipes from the book “Fun with Fruits and Vegetables Kids Cookbook” from Dole Nutrition Program.
- Food Allergy Network Recipes - Allergy-free recipes. Features a different recipe each month.
- Just Kids Recipes - Recipes for children in different categories such as baking required, cookies, drinks, frozen treats, fruit, fun food, gross but fun, snacks, and lunches.
- Kids Kuisine - Recipes for kids to make and enjoy.
- Kids’ Health - from pizza to pancakes — recipes for kids to both make and eat
- The Healthy Refrigerator - Recipes for healthy snack foods, from the American Heart Association Kid’s Cookbook.
- What’s Cooking Grandma? - What’s Cooking Grandma? is a project to create a cookbook of the grandmothers of the world sharing their special recipes.
- Yummy Fun - A colorful, interactive site that comes from Clare Crespo, author of Hey There, Cupcake! and The Secret Life of Food. Yummy Fun is geared toward kids, with the cartoon recipe box that has recipes for such things as Bugs in Amber and Chocolate Moose.
Handy Online Tools
- Cook’s Thesaurus - A cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools.
- Food Reference - Food related trivia, history, recipes, events, art, quotes, and more. A great resource site if you’ve ever wanted food trivia or odd facts.
- Online Cooking Conversions - Various online cooking converters and calculators — very handy when going from UK to US measurements!
Community, Advice, Tips and Tricks
- 10 tasty ways to prepare fish - Ten recipes are listed and include ideas for halibut, sole, salmon and monkfish prepared in a variety of ways such as broiled, steamed, grilled and poached.
- 10 Ways to Speed Up Dinner-Prep Times - Use five-minute windows of time to make big headway on making meals
- A handy illustrated guide to coffee drinks - Via Slashfood, a very useful guide with pictures and full descriptions of different coffees sold here and what sets them apart.
- All chocolate is not the same - do the research before you start munching on those chocolate pieces and bars
- Cake Pan Size Conversions - Trying to fit a square cake into a round pan? Find out how much batter you’ll need - This handy chart by AllRecipes is pretty extensive, covering most common sizes and shapes.
- Compromising with picky eaters - Coping and Compromising with Kids Who Are Picky Eaters
- Cooking 101 Videos - Simple and Delicious’ helpful videos tackling many common topics and points for use in cooking, very helpful for anyone who’s wanting to learn to cook and/or advance their existing cooking knowledge and techniques!
- Cooking for health: Tips from experts - Great tips — check out the article for a more in-depth explanation.
- Don’t let onions make you cry - Did you know that there’s a simple way to chop onions without the tears WITHOUT any gadgets, gimmicks, or special devices?
- Don’t Let Your Chocolate Chips Sink - Slashfood’s tips for baking with chocolate chips and heavier ingredients, and how to keep them from ’sinking’ while baking.
- Great Whites: Get the skinny on milk - Can’t tell milks apart? Not a problem, this article by Women’s Health Magazine outlines the differences and (in their opinion) best milk for you to be drinking.
- Herbs are our friends, so use them - The next time you find yourself trying to eat a healthier regimen of meals, but are discouraged by the bland taste you think may be there, try some fresh herbs and spices.
- How Long Will Your Produce Last? - Women’s Health magazine published this helpful guide, letting us know which vegetables are safe after certain periods of time and when to throw them out.
- How to Carve a Turkey - This article by the New York Times is a helpful step-by-step on the best way to carve up your Thanksgiving bird.
- How to cook the perfect steak - A great “how to” on cooking steak just right
- How to dice an onion like a pro - The Kitchn’s video how-to primer for dicing up this tear-bringing veggie
- How to Store Your Food So It Lasts Longer - Did you know that on average, American families throw away nearly 15% of the food they buy because it spoils? This handy article by Gomestic lists ways to keep your food at its freshest longer.
- How to Turn Cheap Choice Steaks into Gucci Prime Steaks - Steamy Kitchen’s tutorial on how to transform mediocre into marvelous!
- How To: Cut a Pumpkin - Apartment Therapy’s fabulous guide on how to dissect a pumpkin for cooking, aimed at beginners, also useful for squash and other large vegetables!
- iFood.tv - Food.tv is a social network built about users sharing and discussing recipes. Though it supports text/photo recipes, the site really emphasizes videos.
- Kitchen Timesavers That Speed Up Dinner - LifeHacker’s valuable tips: Planning ahead, breaking big tasks down into small actions and achieving a relaxed state of readiness are just as important to productivity in the kitchen as in the work space, and most of us can benefit from a few new ideas in
- Knowing your dietary fat types - You’ve probably heard of ‘good fats’ and ‘bad fats’, but do you know the differences between each?
- Low-fat products does not always mean low-calorie - fat content is not the only variable to look at when deciding when to eat or drink something.
- Make your own 100-calorie snacks - For someone trying to lose weight, 100 calories is ideal — it should be able to satisfy your hunger for a bit without putting you over your calorie quotient. But why waste your money on those pre-packed snacks that are making money off of giving you less
- Make your own fall spice blends - Courtesy of Nicole at Baking Bites, Recipes for Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices and includes tips for tweaking those recipes according to your particular tastes.
- Make your own vanilla extract - The Traveler’s Lunchbox tutorial for making your own vanilla extract. A very well written piece, which includes tips and sources for inexpensive beans.
- Make-Ahead Meals - Make-ahead meals let you serve home-cooked dishes even on the most hectic day.
- Mario Unclogged: How to Sauce Pasta - Serious Eat’s video by Mario Batali. He’s funny, passionate, generously spirited, and a great cook. Here, he explains the how’s and why’s to correctly dressing your pasta with sauce.
- Need to brush up on your food prep skills? - Slashfood’s handy list of several food prep basics that often need review.
- No time to cook? Some tips - a number of quick and healthy eating tips for people on the go, including purchasing pre-packed, pre-washed and pre-sliced fruits and veggies for a healthy, handy snack.
- Recipe Town - A very nice looking culinary community and recipe blog site.
- Secrets of a Cocktail Master - Eben Freeman of Manhattan’s Tailor explains pumpernickel-raisin Scotch and the mysterious Japanese hard shake.
- Seven Common Cooking Mistakes to Avoid - Real Simple online rounds up seven common cooking mistakes you can easily avoid if you practice a few simple tricks of the trade.
- Simple and Delicious: Tips and Tricks - Every month, Simple and Delicious publishes various cooking-related tips and tricks as well as other helpful bits. Most of the time, it’s common-sense type stuff that most people never think about. Very handy! :)
- Snack Attack - Fit Sugar’s excellent section of quick and easy (and good for you!) snacks. Get filled without getting stuffed! :)
- Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - Pressed for time and tired of take-out? The New York Times throws together 101 recipes for easy to make dinners that take 10 minutes or less to prepare. While the recipes themselves aren’t complex, some of them have abstract ingredients, so you’ll want to
- The best foods for young athletes - Although all kids need a nutritionally balanced diet it’s especially important for those involved in sports so they can stay at the top of their game. Written by experts at the Nemours Foundation.
- The guide to good fats and bad fats - A Dietary Fatty Acids study published by U.S. and Canadian nutrition experts, detailing a comprehensive recommendation on how much of what types of fats people should include (or avoid) in their diets.
- Tip for postal mailing cookies - Possibly the best suggestion for mailing those cookies out for the holidays!
- Tips for shipping holiday baked goods - Baking Bites’ helpful tips and advice for shipping and mailing your holiday goodies.
- Tips on choosing meat - WebMD has put together an informative video on meat, explaining your best choices and outlining 4 healthy principals you should follow when it comes to meat.
- Tips on getting your kids to eat their veggies - some suggestions on how you get your kids to eat up
- To Refrigerate or Not: That is The Question - Which fruits and veggies should go in the fridge?
- To toss or to eat: Taking the mystery out of the leftover timeline - Whether leftovers are still good to eat has to do with more than your personal threshold for nastiness. It has to do with how quickly you put the food into the fridge, how long it stayed there and how you reheat it when you’re ready to dig into it once ag
- Videojug: Healthy cooking lessons online - If you need help in the kitchen and don’t want to buy expensive cook books or plan your life around the Food Network’s schedule, you’re lucky to be living in this wonderful age of Internet. Not only are there an endless amount of recipe websites, you can
- Vinegar as wonder substance - From cooking to cleaning, there are hundreds of ways to use vinegar … and here are just a few of them!
- Wine Key - Rachael Ray’s wine pairing key to help you choose a wine with great flavor, but without having to break the bank.
Neat Gift Ideas
- A cool list of haute chocolate - Slash Food’s handy gifting guide for chocolate lovers of all kinds!
- Adagio Teas - Popular online tea store, all kinds of specialty teas.
- Gift Guide: Must haves for the new cook - Marisa McClellan’s excellent piece (posted to SlashFood) about great gift ideas for newer cooks.
- Shop with a Chef - Mainly recipes, nutritional information and cooking ideas, but has GREAT gift ideas and shopping suggestions to match each recipe. Comes in handy if your intended giftee loves a particular type of food or dish!
- Simply Recipes: Shopping Alerts - elise.com’s postings of great deals on various cookware and baking related items. Great if you’re looking for gift ideas for the hard-to-shop-for chef or cooking/baking enthusiast!
- The best of the best: 5 fabulous cookbooks for vegetarians - If you’re a vegetarian or vegan — or even if you’re a meat-eater aiming to add more vegetables into your diet — this article could make your life a whole lot easier. It lists five of the greatest veggie cookbooks around. You’ll find information about a



















