Welcome to Week 4 of Friday Foodies! If you enjoy looking up tasty recipes online, then our weekly feature will be just what the doctor ordered. Every week we will feature an awesome blogger to tell us about the three websites that they search for recipes online. We hope to be able to bring you several fresh new ideas of places to look for your next home-cooked meal!  If you are interested in writing a guest post for this feature please email me (amanda at midwesternmoms dot com) for more information. Our week 4 post comes from Katie of the amazing blog Food, Wine and Mod Podge.

Katie is a wife and kitty-mama living in the heart of Chicago. She works a more-than-full-time job, and finds a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of her daily life in the kitchen. Lucky for her, her husband shares her passion for food, so together they explore new recipes and restaurants. She also is the author of the blog Food, Wine, and Mod Podge, where she blogs about her many kitchen adventures with a side of crafts and DIY projects.

I grew up in a home where casseroles and hamburger helper ruled the kitchen, so I never really understood the potential of food until I moved to the big city and got married. Chicago is so full of amazing food, up and coming chefs opening cutting-edge restaurants with unique techniques. I soon fell in love with the food more than I did the city, as did my husband, and we fell hard. Now, more than three years into our marriage, we subscribe to a ridiculous amount of food magazines, and consider a trip to Whole Foods and cooking at home one of the best date nights possible!

There are definitely some great sites out there, and there are some already featured in previous Friday Foodies posts that I just love. The Epicurious iPad app is absolutely wonderful, and I will always adore Pioneer Woman and all the stories that go with her fabulous pictures. But when I’m looking for some truly unique recipes to try in the kitchen, I go to these great sites:

Smitten Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen is a professional blog written by a woman with spectacular photography skills, and according to her posts, the smallest kitchen in the world. I love everything about her recipes because they are so wonderfully unique. From whole wheat raspberry ricotta scones to leek toasts with blue cheese, she’ll reinvent your cooking repertoire!

Tasty Kitchen

Tasty Kitchen is a cooking community created by the Pioneer Woman to allow her wonderfully-talented readers the chance to share their best. It’s like All Recipes with more creativity and amazing photography. This is a more traditional recipe site in that you can search for exactly what you’re looking for and get a myriad of new recipes to try as a result. The reason why I love it is that all the recipes are submitted by impassioned readers who love food and photography, just like PW, and want to share it with each other!

Food Gawker

If you haven’t figured out yet, I love food photography almost as much as I love food. And it’s only fitting that I love a website devoted to the best food photography on the web, that all links to the blog posts about the food and the recipes. You can search by the latest submissions, most popular, and more, but I guarantee you that you won’t be able to peel your eyes away. These drool-inducing photos will draw you in and get you hooked, and you won’t be able to close the window without poring through dozens of recipe posts.

I hope you enjoy my suggestions and found some new sites for foodie inspiration!

Hi friends! It’s Week 3 of our Friday Foodies feature! Love looking at delicious recipes online? Then this feature will ignite your taste buds! Each week a different blogger will be featured and asked to write about their 3 favorite places to look up recipes online. It is my hope that readers can discover some new websites to visit to find ideas and inspiration for cooking! If you would be interested in writing a guest post for this feature please email me (amanda at midwesternmoms dot com) for more information. Our week 3 post comes from me!!!

I started out in the kitchen at an early age with my Grandma. Most of the time, it included holding a linen dishcloth so that I could help dry the dishes. I remember helping my Grandma make things like cookies, roast (which she always put in the pressure cooker) and Christmas candy. Throughout the years, I have opted to make simple meals because they don’t take much time and it seemed like I was always in a hurry. I never truly enjoyed cooking… that is, until I became a stay at home mom and now have more time for it!

Following are a few of the places where I look online for inspiration.

Can Cook, Will Travel

This beautifully decorated blog is written by my dear friend, Kelli. Each time I visit, Kelli has cooked up another amazing dish that inspires me to get in the kitchen! Her photos will make your mouth water and she uses ingredients that encourage you to try new things. For instance, I had never eaten, nor prepared, foods like turnips, parsnips or even fresh basil before I began following her blog! I can definitely say that she has broadened my horizons… for the better! The recipe for Penne with Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese has to be the perfect comfort food! My daughter absolutely loved this and I feel that it is a great way to sneak a vegetable into her mac and cheese!

Gojee

Want to talk about recipes that are “in your face” delicious? Just visit the Gojee website and you will see what I mean! The full photos of the dishes take up your entire browser and I’ve found it hard not to want to lick the screen! Gojee is a fairly new site that lets you stumble for recipes. You can enter the ingredients you like and dislike (among other search criteria) and find something tasty to make!

Tasty Kitchen

Tasty Kitchen is actually a Pioneer Woman community. Members can upload their own recipes to share! I come here for inspiration several times a week. The recipes can be rated, and have an area where you can print the recipe based on the serving size that you enter. I love looking through their homemade section to find new ways to make my own seasonings and mixes. These also make great gift ideas!

What recipe websites make your mouth water?

Welcome to Week 2 of our Friday Foodies feature! Love looking for recipes online? Then this feature is for you! We will focus on selections from a different blogger each week and ask them to write about the 3 recipe sites and/or blogs that they visit for new recipe inspiration! This way maybe we can all find something yummy to make for the weekend! If you would be interesteed in writing a guest post for this feature please email me (amanda at midwesternmoms dot com) for more information. Our week 2 post comes from Julie.

Julie has been a part time contributor to this blog from the beginning. You may recognize some of her posts in our recipe section. She has written about her first experience making Pot Roast and given us the secret of how to make a Tastee Sandwich. Julie has been both a colleague and friend over the years and I always welcome her contributions with excitement. With that said, let’s see where Julie finds some great recipes online!!

Despite my lack of cooking skills, I love to try new, sometimes fancy, recipes. My husband is not so fond of this. Typically, the new recipes I try turn out pretty well and most I make a second or third time with the exception of one “healthy” recipe I tried for dinner one night. My husband still refers to it as the night I tried to feed him grass. Needless to say, in our house, it is essential that I try new recipes for get-togethers so he doesn’t feel as pressured to not only try the dish but also tell me it was good.

Here are three great recipe sources that have simple, tasty dishes for even the skeptical husbands.

Pampered Chef

I’m sure you have all attended a Pampered Chef party at one time or another. Most likely your sister-in-law, cousin, or a good friend sell these great products. I’m a sucker for Pampered Chef. I have purchased several of the cookbooks, but their site has so many excellent recipes at your fingertips. I usually turn to Pampered Chef when I am entertaining, as I love their appetizers and desserts. If your kitchen is full of their products, like mine, the recipes tell you exactly which tools to use to create a masterpiece. One of my favorite recipes is the Tuxedo Brownie Cups, a delightful, individual chocolate dessert. **Disclaimer: I’m not a Pampered Chef dealer, I really just love their products and recipes.

Bakerella

I was introduced to Bakerella about a year and a half ago. In the office, we were talking about cake balls and I didn’t believe anyone that they were a real thing. Then I saw Bakerella. This site features crafty sweet treats. From pies to cupcakes to cake balls, they’ve got everything. Cake balls are super easy to make and everyone loves them. Cake pops are a fun treat for a child’s party. All the recipes are much easier than they look and a lot of fun to make. Moms, your children will love to help mash up a whole cake to make cakes balls.

Epicurious

This is my favorite site for all sorts of recipes from appetizers to main dishes to desserts. I especially love that there is an iPhone app so when I’m at the store and have no clue what to make for dinner, I can pop Epicurious up on my phone, find a great dish, and get all my ingredients to go home and start cooking. Aside from just recipes, Epicurious offers tips, seasonal & healthy cuisine, and recipe ratings from peers.

When you are looking for something new to make this weekend, stop by one of these sites, try a new recipe, and let me know how you liked it. I would love to hear about some of your favorites.

 

We are starting this beautiful Friday here in the midwest with a new blog feature called “Friday Foodies.” This feature is for people who love to look for delicious, new recipes online to make for their families. Each week we will be focusing on a different blogger and will be asking them to write about what 3 online recipe sites or blogs they visit to find great recipes. Through “Friday Foodies” it is my hope that we can all find some great recipes to make for the weekend to come! Please enjoy the following guest post from local blogger, Lauren Bonk.

Lauren Bonk is a certified baby wrangler, word enthusiast, and scatter-brain extraordinaire.  She owns fifteen copies of Wuthering Heights and happily resides with her family in Nebraska. Read about her budgeting endeavors, food obsession, and mostly-chipper musings at LaurenBonk.com.

 

For as much as I love books and food, one would think I’d have a lot more cookbooks lying around my apartment.

The truth is, it’s just so much easier to hop online, type in the recipe I’m looking for, and place my laptop in a nearby (but splatter-proof) place. That, and our apartment’s so small we barely have room for all of our dishes, let alone a bunch of cookbooks.

I’ll be honest, most of the time I’ll type in something and quickly grab a recipe from sites like www.foodnetwork.com or www.allrecipes.com. These are quick, easy to search, and provide pretty good options for dinner. My favorite recipe sites, however, mix humor, personality, and good writing skills in with their tasty instructions.

Mollie Katzen Online

This year, my husband and I bought a share with a local CSA. What this essentially means is that for 20 weeks of the summer, we’ve got more vegetables than we know what to do with. Mollie Katzen is a vegetarian lifesaver. She’s the author of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest; one of the few cookbooks we have in our apartment right now. Each recipe has personality written into it; Mollie’s got a rustic charm that is fun to read. The recipes are all vegetarian, but most would work just as well if we wanted to add meat. Her website offers a bunch of great recipes from her books…our favorite so far is the one for Avocado Enchiladas.

The Garden of Eating 

I love this blog for a lot of reasons, and not all of them are food-related. This blogger takes clear pictures, demonstrates easy-to-execute steps, and (my favorite part) has an interesting intro or story to go with each recipe. I love that the blogger doesn’t let the label of “Food Blog” get in the way of good writing. You’ve got to try the Perfect Oven Fries…They’re crunchy and salty, and they mostly eliminate the usual guilt that comes with eating a plate of fries.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

This one might be familiar to a few of you, as The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) has a wildly successful personal blog to go along with its culinary counterpart. I’ll admit, I haven’t tried many of her recipes yet, but I love drooling over her beautifully taken food photography and reading her spunky, personal commentary. The Pioneer Woman delights in butter, half-and-half, and sweetened condensed milk…and makes you feel like a sinful partner-in-crime when she talks about adding them to her recipes. This recipe for Perfect Iced Coffee makes for an awesome afternoon pick-me-up.

What I love most about these food sites is that they don’t just engage my stomach; I always leave with hungry eyes and a satisfied brain.

What do you look for in a recipe website? Functionality? Visual appeal? Let us know what whets your online appetite!