In her question-and-answer column, Newsdday writer Erica Marcus lists 10 food websites she uses regularly:
1. Hormel Food Glossary: hormel.com/kitchen/glossary.asp
Hormel, one of the country’s leading producers of meat and meat products (Spam, for example), features an improbably sophisticated food glossary on its website. Here’s a little taste of what you’ll find just in food terms that begin with “ar”: Arame, Arauco Olive, Arbequina Olive, Arbol Chile Pepper, Arborio Rice, Ardennes Ham, Ardi Gasna Cheese, Arepas, Argan Oil.
2. The Cook’s Thesaurus: foodsubs.com
The great strength of this extensive food dictionary is that everything is illustrated with color photographs. You can actually see the difference between Bhutanese red rice and Himalyan red rice. The site also goes to great pains to note and expound upon equivalent terms.
3. Joy of Baking: joyofbaking.com
Quite often, an Internet search for some baking term leads me to Stephanie Jaworski’s homey, informative site. Along with good recipes is a wealth of information on substitutions and conversions as well as clear explanations of technique.
4. Food Measurement Conversion Calculator: ez-calculators.com/measurement-conversion-calculator.htm
Devoted to calculating conversions, whether for foreign currencies or Roman numerals. The Food Measurement Conversion Calculator converts both within the American and metric systems (how many teaspoons in a cup; how many grams in a kilogram) and between them (fluid ounces to milliliters; ounces to kilograms).
5. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR): gpoaccess.gov/cfr/index.html
Published by the Federal Register, the code lists all regulations of the executive departments and agencies of the federal government.
Its 50 “titles” cover everything from the Panama Canal to Wildlife and Fisheries. I refer regularly to Title 21, which pertains to food and drugs. Using the Code of Federal Regulations’ search tool, you can access all the Food and Drug Administration’s standards of identity, i.e. how the government defines every food. What is fat-free half-and-half? The code knows.
6. USDA National Nutrient Database: nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search
The Department of Agriculture maintains this complete and easy-to-use tool for finding out the nutritional content of virtually every food. You have the option of searching for information by unit, weight or volume (i.e., 1 chicken drumstick, 29 grams of chicken drumstick, 1/2 cup of dark meat chicken) and the database includes both whole, processed and even brand-name foods.
7. Chowhound: chowhound.com
Chowhound is a leading Web destination for discussing eating and cooking. 8. Cooking for engineers: cookingforengineers.com
Computer engineer Michael Chu brings a clear, scientific mind to articles such as “Common Materials of Cookware,” “Microwave Safe Containers” and “Smoke Points of Various Fats.”
9. The chef and restaurant database: chefdb.com
ChefDb.com is dedicated to “documenting the careers of chefs and restaurateurs from restaurants around the world.” Modeled on imdb.com, the Internet movie database, ChefDb allows you to search “places” to see who has worked in a given restaurant, or “people” to see the career path of a given chef or restaurateur.
The site is a work in progress, but it’s already a valuable resource.
10. Open Table: opentable.com
Is there any better use for Internet technology than making restaurant reservations? Open Table lists hundreds of restaurants in New York, and 22 on Long Island. You can search by restaurant and see when a table might be available, or you can search by area, date, time and party size. The reservation is made instantly online.
