Web for Foodies

Web for Foodies Audra Lowe: Our times have changed that these days people are wasting as much time searching through cook books to figure out what to make for dinner every single night. Now, they’re actually turning to their laptops even their mobile phones for some ideas and inspiration. Heather Cabot is here. She’s Yahoo’s Web Life editor and Heather’s here because we want to know how the web is really revolutionizing the way that we dine and the ideas that we get. Good to have you back, Heather. Heather Cabot: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Audra Lowe: Big deal though because when you’re rushing trying to make something, people are going straight to the web. Heather Cabot: I don’t know about you. I'm -- I think a lot of people do this, too. You have your mobile phone, you got your Smart phone and you’re in the supermarket. Audra Lowe: Why? Heather Cabot: Sometimes, I've actually put a recipe on my phone. I’d look for a recipe. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Heather Cabot: And then, I've bought the ingredients at the sort at the same time. Audra Lowe: On the spot. Heather Cabot: Yeah, while I'm doing that, I've got my recipe with me but Yahoo actually did a survey recently actually they marked the 15th in the roster of Yahoo and 75% of the people we surveyed told us that the internet has completely replaced cook books. Audra Lowe: Really? Heather Cabot: Yeah but I mean there are so many great resources online now. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Heather Cabot: There are blog, first of all. There are newsletters and we’re going to talk about some of them. There are that you can even just subscribe to the various Twitter feeds and get recipes. Audra Lowe: It can get e-mailed to you as well because I have a lot of cook books at home and the covers look really nice but just collecting dusts because that’s not the first place I’d tend to go now, like you said, I go to the internet. Heather Cabot: And, what a lot of people -- when you mentioned e-mail, I have a colleague at Yahoo who had this terrific idea. When she sees a recipe that she likes online, she e-mails it to herself and she creates a folder in her e-mail and that becomes her recipe box. Audra Lowe: Really? Heather Cabot: So when -- so, say, she wants to make lasagna. Instead of going to through the old fashioned recipe box we used to have from our mothers, she actually goes into her recipe folder on her e-mail and she just searches lasagna and then she has whatever recipes, maybe Mom has e-mailed it to her or maybe a recipe she has e-mailed herself. Audra Lowe: Right. Heather Cabot: And, that’s how she saves her recipe. Audra Lowe: It’s still getting very savvy and we’re going to talk about a couple of these sites and I want to know what your favorites are, too in terms of getting some ideas and inspiration and they’re very sophisticated sites, very snazzy sites. Heather Cabot: Yes. Well, one I was going to say before we get into that is the idea that people are taking photos of the food that not only that they are eating but they are making. And, that is actually the idea behind a lot of these -- we are talking about is to have beautiful food can be and how we can get inspired by those. At Flickr, for example, 7.2 million photos of food on Flickr. Audra Lowe: Okay. Heather Cabot: That’s how often people are uploading but one site that I really like that we were talking about before is Running with Tweezers. And, that’s a food blog that was created by a woman who used to be a fashion stylist and now, she’s a food stylist and a photographer and she just takes photos. Audra Lowe: You can tell by the website. It looks nice. Heather Cabot: Oh, gorgeous photos of food. You can get all kinds of recipe ideas and just an inspiration. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Heather Cabot: I also really like Serious Eats which they sort of called themselves the websites celebrating food enthusiasm. Thy have two blogs on there that I really like. One is called Slice for pizza enthusiasts where they review different pizza joins around the country. Audra Lowe: At that popular? Heather Cabot: And also, Hamburger Today. Audra Lowe: Really? Heather Cabot: For Burger enthusiasts. Audra Lowe: So, this is not a joke. This is real serious business here that we’re talking about. Heather Cabot: Oh, and these are communities so -- and the other thing is that the web has allowed people to do is it’s allowed all of us to become restaurant critics. Audra Lowe: Uh-huh. Heather Cabot: But, in the old days, we have to read in the paper what somebody said. Now, we go online. You go on Yelp, for example, and you can read what thousands of people say about the food, the service, the ambiance. Audra Lowe: Right. It’s what’s like that you told me about earlier that helps you determine the shelf life of your food right on the spot, right. Heather Cabot: Right, we were trying to get to mobile phones earlier. Audra Lowe: Yeah. Heather Cabot: And, there is an app called Still Tasty and what you do is you actually put in the name of the food so you have ketchup sitting on the back in your fridge and you put it into your app and it’ll tell you how long the ketchup will last. So, if it’s in your pantry, it might be several weeks. If it’s in the fridge, it might be maybe a month. Audra Lowe: Right. Heather Cabot: So, it tells you so you’ll know and you can set a reminder for when to throw it out. Audra Lowe: They’re saving a lot of marriages on the internet with this information that have. Heather Cabot: Yeah. Audra Lowe: Thank you so much Heather. Heather Cabot: You're welcome. Audra Lowe: Good to have you back. Heather Cabot: Thanks. Audra Lowe: We’ll be back after this.