Online Recipes

While I own my fair share of cookbooks, and I enjoy my 'old favourites', I also love the convenience of searching for recipes online.  There are lots of advantages of finding recipes this way:

• You can easily search for recipes you wouldn't normally cook, and therefore may not have in your own cookbook collection
• You can search by cuisine, dietary requirement, course or key ingredient - especially useful if you're holding a themed dinner party or need to cook for a vegetarian/gluten intolerant etc guest
• Some websites allow for recipes to be rated and comments to be made - I find this useful if I'm looking for a really great recipe for a popular dish, such as banana bread, or for alternatives to an existing recipe, such as  the 'rock' in rocky road!

There are loads of websites to access for recipes, and I often find great recipes on various blogs, but here are some of my favourites:

• Donna Hay - my personal favourite
• Taste - a great website with recipes from a range of magazines and television cooking programs
• BBC Food - similar to Taste, but from the UK
• Delia Smith - this woman got me though my first Christmas Turkey for guests...unharmed!

Last week, online news provider Finda.Toowoomba started a new segment, "Cooking with Finda", offering step-by-step recipes by the chefs from local restaurant the Olive Branch.  It's a bit exciting to access recipes which are actually served in this popular restaurant.  I'm going to try and have a go at each weekly recipe, starting with this week's Sun Dried Tomato and Thyme bread. 

Naturally I will need to pop into OB each week to taste their version, and make sure I'm on the right track... 

Wish me luck!