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Epicurious: A Free Recipe & Shopping List App [iOS, WebOS, Android + More]

Tim Brookes — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:31:36 +0000

Mobile apps have helped change the way we do things for a while now. The humble printed map no longer gets the use it once did, thanks to Twitter there is no longer a reason to spend money on SMS and it’s been a long time since I picked up a cookery book now I come to think of it.

Thanks to services like Epicurious, discovering new recipes and food is easier than ever. Now that the website has rolled out a full course of applications for various mobile platforms, this wealth of tasty knowledge fits into the palm of your hand or comfortably on your kitchen worktop. In this article I’ll be mainly looking at the iPhone version of the Epicurious app, although the WebOS tablet version gets a decent mention too.

Find Your Flavour

As I briefly mentioned above, there are several different versions for different operating systems. As well as iOS versions for both the iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch, there is a version for Android phones, Windows Phone 7 devices and the Barnes and Noble Nook Color. Oddly enough, the WebOS version is not listed on the official site, although you will find it in the HP App Catalog.

If you don’t have a compatible tablet or phone then the Epicurious website works just as well but might not be the portable solution you are looking for in the kitchen. Bizarrely enough there are also apps for Samsung’s smart refrigerator and various HP printers. Download the Epicurious apps now!

For Starters

It goes without saying that the main weight of this application revolves around cookery and recipes. On the app’s opening screen are a list of categories that Epicurious uses to provide quick access to their database. These labels are great, and provide an easy way to browse recipes without simply relying on a search bar (which is, naturally, also present).

Categories include things like “Weeknight Dinners” and “Vegetarian Mains” as well as skill-dependent titles like “I Can Barely Cook”. Tapping one of these will take you to a big list of recipes, and using the tablet (WebOS) version I was able to sort, favourite, share and so on directly from this view.

Unfortunately on the iPhone it is not possible to sort the recipes according to the date added, relevance, rating and such, though you can add a recipe to your favourites quickly by tapping plus. A bigger screen means more space and a nicer experience, and this is what you’ll get with both the iPad and WebOS versions.

The iPhone version shouldn’t be viewed as bad by any means, and overall the app is responsive and pleasant to use when browsing and viewing recipes. The other tabs are reserved for Search, your Favorites, Info about the app and a Shopping List (more on that later).

The Meat & Gravy

The food on offer, whilst entirely subjective, will probably make you hungry from just browsing. Most recipes are accompanied with a picture, reviews and tips left by those who have tried the concoction and the ability to share, favourite and so on using the plus icon. On tablet versions more space onscreen allows for individual buttons, which makes emailing or saving something for later quick and painless.

Community involvement is key here, and I’ve seen multiple instances of users leaving tips, variations, workarounds for allergies and so on in the reviews section so if you do spot something you like it’s always worth checking the reviews.

The WebOS version features a slider which you can move as you complete the recipe. On the iPhone version you can only look at a small portion of the screen at a time, so the slider has been left out (which doesn’t create that much of a problem).

Just Desserts

Finally, for the cook who likes to plan ahead, we have the shopping list function. With a simple tap of a button (or plus button then Add to Shopping List for iPhone users) the ingredients from your chosen recipe are added to a shopping list in some sort of order.

The application groups similar items into one list, so you don’t even need to make note of the ingredients you need. This is one aspect that the iPhone version really benefits from – portability. Let’s face it, who wants to carry a tablet around the supermarket when you can quickly check your phone instead?

This is a decent feature that, whilst not exclusive to Epicurious, might just make you come back to the app a little more often.

Conclusion

I first used this app on WebOS and instantly saw it as a useful bit of software. On a tablet it’s great for browsing categories, finding new recipes as well as checking recipes whilst cooking. The iPhone’s small screen size does taint the experience slightly, though the app’s performance doesn’t suffer and we’re only a few features away from a top-notch app. There are enough versions of Epicurious available for most people to try it out, and for free there’s very little to lose!

Have you tried Epicurious? Do you have any other favourite recipe and shopping list apps? Let us know in the comments!

Find Recipes To Share on Facebook With Foodily

Angela Alcorn — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:01:01 +0000

How do you share your favourite recipes with friends? Do you write them out? Send emails? Post links on Twitter or Facebook? And how do you find out which recipes your friends like? Do you have a handful of friends who always cook fantastic food? Wouldn’t you love to find out which recipes they’re enjoying?

Facebook users visit the social networking site almost every day to share links and random information. It’s therefore great news that Facebook now has a really integrated recipe application by Foodily for everyone to make use of. While the Foodily website itself is already incredibly useful, this new Facebook application is the ultimate way to share and explore recipes with your friends and family.

Check Out Foodily

Firstly, you can sign up for Foodily itself on their website with either an email address or a Facebook Connect login. There’s no need to use the Facebook application at all, but it does make it more sociable if you do!

If you sign up with an email address, it’s possible to use Facebook Connect to find your friends later.

Once you’re signed in, you’ll see that Foodily revolves around providing you with a recipe “Feed”. This feed is made up of recipes your friends like – and to get you started Foodily has added you as a friend so you can see their recommended recipes.

Search Recipes By Ingredient

Foodily claims to have the world’s largest recipe database since it links in to many of the biggest databases and blogs. The search function is also quite sophisticated, allowing you to quickly find the exact recipe you need.

At the top of all pages in Foodily is the search bar, allowing you to search for anything in the Foodily collection. Results can be limited by low-fat, low-carb, top rated, blogs only and more.

If you want to be able to exclude certain ingredients as well, go back to the home page to enter in your search.

Then all you do is browse away. Foodily gives you a link to the creator of the recipe and a brief list of ingredients. So, you’re always going to refer to the original creator in order to obtain the method for cooking.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll see Foodily have also offered some suggested categories for you to browse for great recipes.

Install The Facebook Foodily Application

If you’d like to use Foodily inside Facebook as well, the application can be found here. The interface within Facebook looks very much like the original website, so there’s no surprises when it comes to usage.

Recipes To Share With Your Friends

Whenever you see a recipe you like in Foodily, you just hover your mouse over it and you’ll see a heart icon. Click that and you’ve saved it as a favourite. This is all it takes to share the recipes with friends both on Foodily and using Facebook.

Another link will pop-up after you’ve saved offering the ability to save the recipe to a list, such as for entertaining, kid-friendly or some other list name you’d prefer to use.

Later, you can easily browse your own favourite recipes by checking out your saved recipes and browsing your lists.

Competition

Foodily is one of many great recipe sites available, including Gojee, Kitchen Monki, Punchfork and Yummli. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but you can’t help but love to browse them all!

What do you think is the most important feature of a good recipe search site? Do you love to share with your friends? Is the search capability more important than the size of the database? Why or why not?

Punchfork – A Social Aggregator Of The Best Recipes In The World

Angela Alcorn — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:01:57 +0000

Need some food inspiration? Run out of ideas for dinner? Or do you need to find something special for a dinner party? Well, the best possible website to check out would be a site which tells you the most-loved recipes from some of the best recipe sites. That way, the recipes appeal to a wide audience and generally look pretty tasty. Sound good? Well, you need to see Punchfork.

Punchfork aggregates recipes from several of the best recipe sites and ranks each recipe according to how many times it’s been shared on social networks. This is an ideal way of ensuring you see just the best recipes on offer.

Social Aggregator Of Recipes

Sometimes a little social aggregation can really help to filter things. Not everyone has the time to sort the wheat from the chaff themselves. Especially when it comes to recipes – we just want to find something that looks good and give it a try.

Punchfork polls social networks like Twitter and Facebook to find the recipes which are being linked to by the most people. So, you’re only looking at the recipes other people have deemed worthy of sharing with their friends.

The Best Recipes In The World

Punchfork have chosen the recipe databases and food blogs well so that only the best recipes are in the pool of recipes on offer. These are then further filtered by the social ranking process to ensure you’re presented with the best recipes on offer. You’re basically browsing the best recipes in the world!

Save Your Recipes

Before you get into browsing the site, create an account with Punchfork so you can save your favourite recipes for later.

Browsing New Recipes

At the top of the page, Punchfork offers the best ways to browse the recipes. Limit your browsing to just food blogs or use recipes from all of the available food sites.

View trending recipes to check out new favourites, browse the newest recipes to find the ones which were most recently published online, or see the top rated section for the recipes most-loved over time. There’s plenty to check out!

Search By Ingredient

Just like any great recipe website, Punchfork will let you search the recipes for ingredients you happen to have on hand or wish to use. The search function will limit itself to whichever sections you are currently browsing. So, if you’re checking out new recipes only it will return results from the new recipe section.

A quick search for new Kahlua recipes from food blogs found a number of great recipes I now need to try, including Mexican fudge sauce, easy tirimisu trifles, Kahlua brownies with browned butter and much more. There’s no denying the danger of this site!

More Great Ways To Find New Recipes

At MakeUseOf we’re always finding new ways to find the best recipes. Some other great tools you might like are:

What other features do you look for in a recipe website? What would make Punchfork your ideal go-to recipe site? Let us know!

5 Fascinating Recipe Sites To Brush Up Your Culinary Skills

Jessica Cam Wong — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 01:31:42 +0000

Getting closer to the holidays, some people may dread the heavy foods that abound during these times. But as the season is a synonym for sharing good times and good food with loved ones, I’m sure we all enjoy the holiday season.

When it comes to enjoying food, there are loads of recipe sites that provide you with great food, some with more active communities than others. AllRecipes comes to mind, as well as Chow and Epicurious. Those sites may be really well-known but there are many more that you shouldn’t miss out on.

Whether you can’t resist a restaurant’s dish or want to try your hand at making your own version, or whether you really want to keep a budget for your meals, the next couple of sites may just be your cup of tea.

Restaurant Clone Recipe Sites

Top Secret Recipes

Top Secret Recipes contains a large collection of clone recipes for a variety of chain restaurants, from T.G.I. Friday’s, Outback Steakhouse to most fast food restaurants. The recipes are the food creations of Todd Wilbur, a self-proclaimed “food clone freak” who goes out of his way to uncover the recipes behind many popular dishes in chain restaurants in his lab kitchen.

Since he’s been doing this for a really long time, some of his recipes are now behind a pay wall ($0.99) or only found in his books, but you can also find some of his restaurant-inspired recipes on his official YouTube channel, where he features a mixture of semi-homemade techniques so users don’t have to spend forever attempting a recipe.

Here’s a video where he clones Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake.

Wilbur has a passion for coming up with these recipes in a super easy-to-follow way so that you will lose all fear and try the recipes yourself pretty soon. In fact, they’re so easy, he even made a video of his Snickers clone recipe while blindfolded, where of course, hilarity ensues.

On his site, you can find ratings to some of his recipes, which are always helpful and aren’t available for clone recipes on other sites.

Copykat

This site offers an impressive number (1,500!) of articles and full recipes in written form, from monthly menus where she lays out many links to her own recipes to her versions of restaurant clone recipes, such as Olive Garden’s Pumpkin Cheesecake, (which only has original recipes on the official site) only available in the fall in the restaurant (but now you can try it any season!).

Check out the Copykat restaurant recipes category for more. Copykat’s YouTube channel has some good videos that don’t rush into it. Here’s one where author, Stephanie Manley narrates over how to make KFC’s Buttermilk Biscuits.

Like Top Secret Recipes and CDKitchen’s Copycat & Restaurant Recipes, Copykat offers recipes without process photos, which may not always help newbies so that is why the sites in the next section are such gifts to humanity. But recipes without photos aren’t always a bad thing, because at least in written format, they may be more accommodating than cooking videos which are sometimes too fast-paced.

Recipe Sites Featuring With Step-By-Step Photos

Budget Bytes

A true gem, Budget Bytes is a hard-not-to-love recipe blog that provides not only step-by-step photos (something I really wish Allrecipes would implement as it seems to hold the largest recipe collection), but it also provides recipe costs, serving costs as well as cooking time in an extremely thorough way, which is more win for readers!

The site was initially featured on the MakeUseOf Directory for being a handy site with inexpensive recipes, but the scope of the recipes on here are far and beyond budget meals.

As the motto of the site says (“On a mission to save money and eat well!), the number-crunching author also gives a variety of recipes for the health-conscious and/or vegetarian. There is no rating system as this is a blog, but the response is very positive as you see in the comments, so this site is definitely worth a look or even a spot in your bookmarks.

Visual Recipes

I guess I’m not the only that thinks that AllRecipes should allow step-by-step photos because another incredibly handy recipe website called Visual Recipes has emerged, focusing on providing stunning photo slideshows in user-submitted recipes for the visual learner.

Like AllRecipes, it has a video section and ratings, as well as cooking time and serving sizes.

MovieRecipe – Tells You What Dish Was In A Movie & Gives You The Recipe

Did you see Ratatouille and know what kind of food it is? MovieRecipe will let you know what was eaten in your favorite movie and even provide you with the recipe! The selection of movies isn’t very large, and some contain obvious items, but it’s an entertaining website for recipe ideas.

There a myriad of recipe sites on the net today. Share your favorite sites on the comments below!

Photo credit: Allrecipes’s Favorite Photos 11/9/2010

Is Kitchen Monki The Complete Recipe Management Website You Were Looking For?

Saikat Basu — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:30:33 +0000

Too many cooks can spoil the broth, but not when it comes to cookery and recipe websites. There are so many dishes to go around. To the soup of websites which are helping us become better cooks each day, let’s welcome Kitchen Monki.

Kitchen Monki is a recipe management website which tries to answer the question ““ how different can a recipe management website be from the similar ones in its stock? After all, aren’t they all about uploading and sharing recipes.

Yes, a recipe website’s main wealth is the number of dishes it can help you serve up. But as some of the successful cooking websites covered earlier show, it’s also in the tools that make the job of cooking fun and easy.

What does Kitchen Monki bring to the table? Bring your pots and pans. Let’s see what’s cooking at Kitchen Monki.

A Productive Hand for the Kitchen

Cooking is fun for some, while a chore for others. Kitchen Monki as a web app helps to organize your cooking tasks by providing a place to hold all your recipes. Cataloging all your recipes in one place also allows you to take Kitchen Monki’s help in preparing a shopping list from the ingredients. Finally as a social site for foodies, you can tap into all the public recipes as well as those shared by your friends.

Let’s Start With Some Recipes

If you have just logged into a fresh account, you can start by decking up your profile page. Me”¦I headed straight to the Recipe Explorer. The Recipe Explorer looks quite similar to iTunes. It’s not mere window-dressing as the iTunes-like interface lends a lot of user-friendliness to the task of searching through the lot of recipes.

Think of the recipes as individual MP3 arranged in your music library. Recipes are listed and can be sorted by Meal, Course, Cuisine, and Time. The Categories and Filters on the left-hand column help to further drill down to the numerous recipes that are in Kitchen Monki’s catalog. For instance, a harassed single parent shouldn’t miss the Time to Cook and Mood categories for preparing some quick bites.

The Quick Filter box is where you can type in an ingredient and drill down to the recipes. Then there’s the mandatory large search box if everything else fails (but it shouldn’t).

Got The Recipe”¦What Next!

Don’t miss the little grey arrow next to each recipe. Here’s the timesaver. Clicking on the arrow expands your recipe selection and you can see some info at a glance and also in detail (The View Recipe button). Now, you can perform a lot of actions ““

Queue /De-Queue ““ This tells Kitchen Monki that you are thinking of preparing the dish. The ingredients required go into the Kitchen Monki Grocery List Manager which prepares your shopping list.

Add to Plan – If you cook a dish at regular intervals, you can add it to a calendar and plan out your meals. The Meal Planner tool is built around the calendar.

Add to List ““ This is your automated grocery list”¦a single click adds the ingredients with the proper quantities.

If you like to print out your recipe and stick it on the kitchen wall, click on Print. Sharing is another way to spread the good word around. You can also embed a recipe in your own blog.

Start the Burners”¦View a Recipe in Detail

There are two things I really liked about the detailed view (apart from the banana ratings). The steps are neatly demarcated with each step’s ingredients placed alongside. The serving size can be adjusted and the ingredients changed accordingly. The automated grocery list though takes the original ingredients before adjustments.

For The Busy Mom”¦The Quick Meal Planner

You can select meals by preparation time from the Recipe Explorer itself or take the help of this tool. Select from the dropdowns and you have a quick fire recipe in your hands.

Fancy Yourself As a Cook? Add Your Own Recipes

Got grandma’s secret recipe for a delicious sauce? Add (and share) it with the help of the Recipe Creator. There are quite a few fields to fill out but when it comes to cooking the beauty lies in the details. The other reason is that at Kitchen Monki, the recipe helps drive your shopping list tool, the USP of the web service.

A Shopping Aid with Smarts”¦The Grocery List Manager

This page is like a simple itemized shopping list. But the automated and quick add features make this Kitchen Monki’s most powerful tool. The ingredients in your recipe find a place here. Common ingredients from multiple recipes find a place in the combined ingredient list. The Quick Add feature is for adding extra items that don’t come from the recipes. You can always edit the list.

Kitchen Monki keeps track of all the stores at which you shop and can print separate shopping lists aisle by aisle for each store. You can search for a store using Kitchen Monki’s Select a Store search feature.

With the list finalized, you can also send the specially-formatted list via SMS to any mobile phone in the U.S. Items can be ticked off in the mobile list with each item bought. Your shopping just got a lot more intelligent.

A Community of Foodies

On Kitchen Monki you can seriously “˜break bread’ thanks to the large social circle around food. Kitchen Monki is well connected with Facebook’s API. If you love anything that’s a food, check out the blog and the Cooking News section.

I have rambled on for quite a while, and still have had to leave out a few tiny details. Do a bit of your own recipe exploring and let us know if you think that Kitchen Monki is the complete recipe management website you were looking for.

5 Clever Ways To Use Remember The Milk Lists & Tags

Jessica Cam Wong — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:30:33 +0000

Trying to keep up with your task list? You’ve probably heard of the excellent task manager, Remember The Milk, which has been featured on MakeUseOf before countless times for its cross-platform accessibility (Linux, iOS, bookmarklet, you name it). And now that the basic iPhone app has become available for free (without automatic sync or push notifications unless you’ve gone Pro), more users will be able to take advantage of this extremely powerful application, especially if they follow up with the official RTM blog.

In fact, over at their blog, there’s a very handy feature — Tips & Tricks, which provides a creative tip regarding Smart Lists, tags and everything in between from RTM forum users. Here are five of the more recent tips that I’ve found come in very handy regarding everyday tasks.

1. Minimizing Food Wastage

In order to keep things like vegetables (due to my bad memory, may often go bad in my household) without going to waste, you can use these tips in conjunction (even though they were brought to attention in two different posts):

Setting an RTM Smart List including vegetable items (that you’re planning to use in the week) that have earlier expiration dates as higher priority, while products that will last longer are set as lower priority.
Setting the expiration dates to these perishables (as tasks) whenever you’re standing in line at the supermarket waiting to pay. You could also add reminders to eat the food a few days or a week before.

The second post mentions how the user, being a single guy, can be more organized in his kitchen with this system. It will surely help anyone, living alone or not, to keep track of perishables and minimize food wastage.

2. House-Cleaning

I often dread cleaning my whole place as I would attempt to have a cleaning day (usually Saturday or Sunday), which meant it would take some really long hours to finish mopping, vacuuming, etc. I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way. In fact, one RTM user achieves a very nice system for easing the cleaning chores. You can also implement this system by assigning each of your house rooms in a new ‘housework’ list to a day of the week. Having the due dates repeat weekly, you then list the many tasks for that particular room such as cleaning shower tiles, toilet, changing towels in the Notes section of the room task.

That way, you can dedicate a small and less overwhelming subset of tasks for every day of the week. By Sunday, you can actually enjoy the weekend and not worry about spending countless hours of your Sundays cleaning away.

Of course, you can also divide the cleaning tasks instead of using rooms for task items. You can perform one single cleaning task, such as vacuuming on Monday, clean the toilet on Tuesday, etc.

3. Keeping A Dashboard For ‘Sanity Check’

The Overview tab you may see once you log in to the web app could become more useful if it could combine all overdue tasks and task due today so they can be edited more easily. Good news for you, with this tip from RTM’s savvy users, you’ll essentially be getting exactly that, in a Smart List you might want to address as Dashboard. You can search for terms such as dueBefore:monday to include overdue items, items due today and due within this week before next Monday. Now you’ll just need to hit the Save tab to create the Smart List.

You can also use the Dashboard to monitor items that don’t have a due date. For example, I use the due:never and status:Incomplete search terms for my Dashboard Smart List (excluding items from my other lists).

If I had found out about the next tip, my Smart List search terms would have looked a lot tidier.

4. Excluding Other Items With tagContains

Like I said, this tip offers a way to simplify the NOT search terms. Items that don’t belong in your RTM main task list (e.g. projects, watch, etc) can be tagged with a symbol “+” at the start, eventually becoming tagged with “+projects”, “+watch”, etc. So now, instead of using so many “NOT tag:tag1 NOT tag:tag2“, my Dashboard displays NOT tagContains:+.

If you have several Smart List, this will simplify a lot of typing whenever you want to change their search criteria.

5. Monitoring Bill-Paying Dates

I use a variation of this system because it’s extremely useful for anyone who needs to pay bills, whether online or not. Every time you receive a new bill, either in the mail or you’re notified by e-mail, set up a task for this bill (with the amount in the name as well) and assign the due date to be the day of the month that it’s due (which usually fall around the same time every month but may vary sometimes.) If you set the tasks a priority (any level), which displays more distinctive colors and you don’t regularly use priority levels, these bill reminders (along with a note of the minimum payment) will pop out very nicely.

You could also tag them with bill so a search for tag:bill can easily bring up all your future bill-paying dates.

These are some of the more interesting Tips & Tricks that were featured on the official Remember The Milk. But of course, there were probably more than 50 of these tricks, all of which served highly useful to their respective users. Do you have any you wish to share? Voice your tips over in the comments!

Photo credit: Assess, muammerokumus, Mr. Thomas, Casey Serin

3 Great Online Resources To Learn How To Cook Well

Tina Sieber — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:31:30 +0000

The new year is an excellent time to start something new. Rather than making resolutions that won’t last beyond January, why not try something different? Set yourself up to learn a new skill, something that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Within this article, I will show you three online resources that will help you learn how to cook and become good at it.

Cooking has been a necessity of life for hundreds of years. Yet, with the rise of processed food and fast food restaurants, it has become a mostly neglected art. Only in recent years have countless TV cooks polished up its reputation.

Imagine you could not only learn how to cook well, but also cook healthy and tasty meals, bake delicious cakes and fresh bread. You would save money cooking for yourself rather than buying expensive meals, friends and family would love to be your guest, and you would never be short of ideas for yummy gifts or much desired vouchers.

Chef2Chef Online Cooking Class

This online cooking class will serve any skill level. Whether you have never even cooked tea or whether you’ve routinely been cooking simple meals and know kitchen tools and routines inside out, you can start here.

There are ten different courses, which contain five lessons each. You can read through as many lessons as you like, but if you have little time, you can manage at least one lesson each day, i.e. one course per week. The articles are pure theory and will work well with recipes that match the respective skill level. Each lesson features two “recipes for success”.

You can practice your skills browsing the site’s thorough recipe collection. It is neatly categorized into courses, types of foods (e.g. meat, vegetarian, fish), cuisine (e.g. Cuban, German, Thai) or methods (e.g. grilled, steamed, barbecued).

Learn To Cook 101

This site is best suited for people who have a basic understanding of cooking. If you can already cook simple recipes, i.e. read recipes and pick the right ingredients and tools, this is the right place to start.

Learn to Cook 101 provides instructions on how to equip your kitchen, general articles on cooking, diet, health & fitness, and of course you’ll find several recipes. Click through to the articles to strategically look up the information you need to improve your skills.

Passionate About Food

As you become more and more skilled and passionate about cooking, head over to this site. You’ll find an alphabetically sorted Guide to Cooking Techniques, Kitchen & Cooking Tips that will save you time, information about Herbs & Spices, and lots more.

Once you know the basics of how to cook, you may find the following MakeUseOf articles interesting:

Simon eyed Great Cooking Websites from a Different Perspective
I showed you 3 Recipe Sites For The Post Fast Food Era

On MakeUseOf we have previously showed you things you can learn online:

Mark presented The Best Online Sources To Play & Learn Chess
Laurence covered Essential Free Tools to Learn Guitar Playing Online
Ryan wrote about Top 5 Sites For Learning Piano Online
Shankar found 30+ Online Resources to Expand your English Vocabulary
I compiled 7 Online Resources To Help you Improve Your Writing
Angeline introduced 18 Great Sites to Learn a New Language

Before you pick a skill, make sure you have an idea how to start. About.com has a great article on How to Learn a New Skill.

What did you learn in 2009 and what do you want to learn in 2010?

Image credits: svilen001, nkzs

Cleaning and Stain Removal for Bachelors

Tina Sieber — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:48:28 +0000

This post is a little different. I mean, usually we write about tech stuff, software and online tools. Well, this post does cover online resources and tools – sort of. Anyways, I’m positive many of you will find this information helpful, and that’s what Make Use Of is about after all.

I’m sure you’ve all been annoyed with dirt in your home at some point. Now, imagine a stain on your favorite shirt, mold in the bathroom or wine on the carpet. What would you do? Call Mom? Noooo! You’re mature and able to survive on your own. So who is always by your side and will never ask intimidating questions? The internet of course!

So thanks to the internet you’re here, which is where you’ll be provided with the tools you need to survive in the household. This is a guide for all the (soon to be) masters and mistresses of the household who may need a little help in the cleaning section. Here you go!

A few things you should keep handy, even if you wouldn’t normally use them, is some liquid soap, baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, salt and some hydrogen peroxide. You’ll get the latter at a pharmacy. Those are prime ingredients for non toxic, cheap, eco-friendly and effective cleaning solutions. Seriously, you don’t need to waste your money on the expensive stuff!

Time to open up some online resources.

(1) DoItYourself

Does your apartment look like ALF just landed in it, tried to catch a cat, abused your kitchen, made a bed out of your laundry, had dinner in it, and you just learned [enter family member here] wants to visit? I guess the regular stain removal guide won’t get you anywhere, you need serious help!

DoItYourself.com features several articles on the Household. Just pick a scene, such as Bathroom and Kitchen Cleaning, find the respective article and follow through. The instructions are detailed, so you’ll know exactly what to do.

By the way, you may also find the Natural Disasters section helpful.

(2) About.com & How Stuff Works

Ok, it’s not that bad, your apartment is under control, no disasters, just regular spills. What do you need to know?

Generally, my first stop when I need help, since I tend to end up right there anyways, is About.com. In this case I found 10 Stain Removal Tips you should absorb, and several more helpful articles. Their A – Z list is not as comprehensive as the one that will follow, though.

HowStuffWorks has a three part series on stains. Part one – How to Remove Stains and Spots – sums up what sort of stains you may face. Part two gives some Basic Rules for Stain Removal, which are in fact different than those found on About.com. In part 3 you will See all General Removal Tips articles they have, which are not that many, but they cover the most common incidents.

(3) Precious Textiles

Textile Affairs provides a comprehensive list of Stain Removal Answers To Common Care Questions, tailored to deliver solutions for seriously stained laundry.

(4) A – Z Stain Removal

GoodHousekeeping has a very detailed and helpful A – Z Stain Buster guide. Perfect to quickly look up a cleaning strategy for a specific stain.

(5) Video Instructions

Then, if you hate reading, I recommend searching YouTube for answers. Yes, you heard right, YouTube is a good place to find practical instructions on cleaning. Here is one of my favorites:

Alright seriously, that video is very entertaining, however not helpful. But directing you to YouTube is not a joke. You just have to focus, don’t let the nonsense distract you.

(6) Cleaning Your Computer

And finally, did you know you could Remove Stains from a MacBook with Toothpaste? Would Mom have known that one?

Do you have some ingenious cleaning tips to share? Maybe a website full of cleaning ideas that we can all benefit from? Go ahead and use the comments! And in case your Mom, girlfriend or best friend forwarded this article to you, please let us know so we can reward them with a virtual flower bouquet!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

FOOD Love: Top 5 Recipe Websites

Aibek Esengulov — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 02:04:21 +0000

Looking for simple and tasty or exotic and quick or haute cuisine but aren’t sure which are the best places to search for them? Here is a list of the top (well maybe not the ultimate collection but definitely one of the better ones) places on the web for food-connoisseurs, family cooking and hunger-driven lazy cooks.

The thing that stands out about these recipe websites is the fact that all featured recipes are tried and tested and allow for user commenting/reviewing, so you can be assured of the quality of the recipe. Enjoy!

Top 5: Recipe Websites (again in no particular order)

(1) GroupRecipes
Almost 100% user-contributed recipe website that does an excellent job at making huge recipe database easy to digest and browse through. Browse by flavors (spicy, sour, chilly…), images, ingredients (whats in your fridge), popularity, menus, users, and tagcloud.

(2) SimplyRecipes
A wonderful recipe-based food blog where all recipes have been personally tested by either the blogger, her family/friends. Browse recipes by primary ingredients (chicken, seafood, meat…), meal course (breakfast, desert…), diet type (veg., low carb…). The quality of the recipes is reflected in the number of subscribers (over 230k!)

(3) 101CookBooks
This one is for the foodies…the people who love to eat food with their eyes and would like a short intro for each of the recipes. Basically, another excellent recipe-based food blog (2006 food blog winner) where readers can feel a nice personal bond with the blogger through her writing style (a short personal and technical history for each recipe) along with beautiful imagery. Lets you browse recipes by type (appetizers, baked good, mains, etc.)

(4) AllRecipes
Over 40,000 recipes along with complementary extras i.e. nutritional content, user rating and an interesting meal accompaniment tool that lets you search for accompaniments such as side dish/desert/… to this recipe. Other features include recipe videos and related food guides such as healthy eating etc. (Note: website navigation is slightly confusing).

(5) Chow
Apart from recipes gives other foodie related information such as food events, user stories etc. Simply yet efficient recipe browsing method where users can browse through recipes by sides, mains, sweet and drink. Plus insightful video section which gives a good selection of videos on cooking and food etiquette howto’s.

And some more recipe stuff …

Epicurious – very similar to the above mentioned Allrecipes
SmoothiesRecipies – over 100 smoothies recipies
BakeSpace – social networking website for foodies