Dear readers: It’s almost Halloween, which consumes a lot of my thinking capacity this time of year. Also, things are just busy, on all fronts of life. And also, I’m out of ideas. Not forever, just in the short time period I have allotted myself to write the column this week. Aside from personal experimentation at home with new recipes, or seasonality, suggestions from friends and readers are often my best sources of inspiration for Edible Witness. Barring that, I will just rely on the trusty ol’ Internets. So, in a desperate lunchtime browse through my regular blogroll, I figured — why not just share some of these sites with my readers? Is that anything? Sure it is! (I will atone for the flagrant laziness of this idea, very soon, in a future column, I promise).
So, here’s an overview of some of my favourite food-related places to visit on the meganet, in no particular order, for your bookmarking pleasure. If you’ve got some of your own, please share!
Serious Eats — Any website that has navigational tabs devoted solely to hamburgers and pizza has my attention. Serious Eats is a comprehensive site for food lovers and home cooks, compiling all things of interest to food lovers, from restaurant reviews, features on real dishes from real places (mostly in the U.S., but some Toronto places have been featured), recipes, best-of lists, wine recommendations, book reviews, and the very excellent, very nerdy Food Lab, where they’ll scientifically break down how to caramelize onions in 15 minutes, or how to sous-vide your meat in a beer cooler. You know, everyday stuff.
The Kitchn — The Kitchn is a terrific go-to reference website for how to life-hack your kitchen, which also refreshes content regularly with new recipes and cooking advice. Got a question about kitchen supplies, a specific ingredient, or dinner party ideas? They’ve got you covered. This site comes to us from the same people who do Apartment Therapy, so naturally, it scores extra points for its treasure trove of fun kitchen-related DIY projects to browse through.
Smitten Kitchen — The inclusion here of New York writer Deb Perelman’s much-loved blog should be of little surprise to regular readers, since I teef practically all of her recipes and write about them here (with credit, of course!) What I cannot ever hope to recreate, however, is her excellent photography, her witty and endearing voice, and her ability to make even her biggest failures seem amazing. Her new cookbook is also now available.
Tastespotting — I don’t love the term I’m about to use, but this site is really pure, unadulterated food porn. I’ve been busted scrolling through it during lunch breaks on a number of occasions. A great site to browse through when you’re trying to figure out what you want for dinner (and quite a lot more SFW than the one below), Tastespotting is like the Internet’s food-only Pinterest board, acting as a visual bulletin on all things delicious.
What The F*** Should I Make For Dinner? — If you need an idea for dinner tonight, and would like the Internet to randomly generate ideas for you and spit them out at you in all caps and laced with gratuitous profanity, then this is the site for you. NSFW, obviously.
Sara Chan is a Toronto-based entertainment lawyer, food enthusiast, unprofessional home chef and even less professional food photographer. Her favourite food group is pork.