I also got an e-mail about Learn Cooking, a British website that teaches you how to make basic stuff. I took a look at it, and I found it quite useful. I use the Joy of Cooking for basic information about how to cook new stuff, but, truth be told, I do prefer online sources.

Just got an e-mail about another site for San Francisco restaurant reviews. It's Foodnut.com and it focuses on the city and the Peninsula. It provides lots of pictures of the establishment and the dishes, as well as prices and photos of the menus. You can browse restaurants by type and price.

I just came about with the My Recipes website - which features recipes from Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset, Coastal Living, Cottage Living, Real Simple and Health magazines, among others. I don't read any of those magazines, but for that matter, I also don't read Gourmet or the other magazines featured on my favorite recipes website: Epicurious. The recipes are also rated (though fewer of them are rated than at other sites), though so far of the two recipes I made from the site - one that was rated excellent resulted in the most inedible piece of meat I've ever had the displeasure to have in my mouth. Still, the website is worth exploring and trying out.

The two other websites that I use regularly while looking for recipes are All Recipes, where most of the recipes have been entered by regular people, and The Food Network, whose recipes are often too complicated for my taste.

Do you know of another recipe website that also has thousands of recipes and user ratings/reviews? If so, please comment here!

As you probably know, I love to cook international foods, and one of the places where I get recipes, in addition to invaluable information about how and what people eat is the Cultural Profile Project from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The project provides a myriad of information about the cultures of each of very many countries. Included here is information about their food, what they eat, when and so forth. It's definitely worth checking out if you are interested in what others eat - and those others, of course, can be your neighbors.

I love the restaurant reviews of the East Bay Express. When I'm looking for a new place to try for dinner, I check the Express first. They review all sort of interesting restaurants (here is where I found The New Zealander, Old Weang Ping and Tropical Paradise) and the reviews are well written and fun to read. They also tend to be much more thorough than those of the Chronicle (which are utilitarian but boring). So if you're looking for a place to eat in the East Bay, check it out!

eastbayexpress.com | Dining

http://celestialcoupon.whitehorse.com/

Expires May 18th.

I discovered Becks & Posh's blog when they visited me and I haven't been able to stop looking at it since. They have some of the most gorgeous food pictures I've ever seen. Looking at them makes me want to take my food photography seriously. Until now, all I've been doing is taking a quick snapshot of a dish and praying it'll be in focus (our digital camera could be better for these purposes). Their pictures remind me of what my old photography teacher used to say: "don't be afraid to get close".

Food Muse is a food blog by one of my favorite writers. I love the elegance and sumptuosness of her writing. I also like the clean look of her blog and the ever changing top pictures. I may just copy that :)

A couple of days ago I was searching for reviews of Quince when I stumbled upon the Vinography.com blog. As expected, the blog focuses on wine but it also includes a few reviews of Bay Area restaurants. What's notable is how well written they are. I usually just read restaurant reviews for the information, but these were just a pleasure to read for their own sake. I wish I could write like that!

I'm adding a link to Vinography and I'll be reading its feed, maybe it'll encourage me to get more into wine as well :)

I just came across jatbar.com, AKA Jason and Terrys Bay Area Reviews, a new (to me) website with personal reviews of Bay Area restaurants. The reviewers specialize in the South Bay, and they have LOTS of reviews. It's worth checking out.

From http://www.comicazee.com/cartoonist.asp?id=5

I'm not sure if I'd call this a "great" website, but it's certainly amusing. Read the musings and rantings of bitter waitresses (and waiters!) at bitterwaitress.com

kiss my bitter ass

The Cook's Thesaurus is one of my favorite food websites, and probably the most useful site around. It's basically a food encyclopeadia; it gives you a description (even info about its origin and types) of almost any ingredient you can think of and tells you what you can substitute for it. Today, for example, I needed a substitute for sherry and the site told me that, as I suspected, I could use madeira. It also told me I could use red wine plus sugar, which I wouldn't have thought of myself.

You can find it at http://www.foodsubs.com/