For those of you out there with iPhones, there are all sorts of great food-related applications available for your nifty gadget. You can plan your evening meal with the Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner or find the closest grocery store or take-out joint with Fast Food. The UrbanSpoon app allows you to find area restaurants with a simple shake of your phone.

Kraft Foods has decided to get in on the iPhone app-action and to do it has creating the iFood Assistant. This app serves up a daily recipe, as well as ideas for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. However, as far as I can see, there are a couple of glitches in Kraft's plan for iPhone domination. When it comes to healthy eating, Kraft's reputation is a bit dubious. I would be concerned that the recipes it serves up would be laden with overly processed, chemical-laden ingredients. Second, they've decided to charge $.99 for their app. I could see people downloading it if it was free, but I'm not sure how many takers there'll be for a this sucker when it's got a price tag on it (especially since the Allrecipes.com download is free and offers many of the same services).

For those iPhone accessorized foodies in the audience, does Kraft's app appeal to you? Would you be willing to pay a buck to have recipes and meal suggestions sent to your phone?

[via Deidre]

Remember yesterday when I told you that Cherries Jubilee was something I've never had, along with Baked Alaska, Pig's Feet, and Mutton? Well, I guess I have to add this to the list too.

It's National Crab Meat Newburg Day, proving once again that just about every food in the universe has its own food holiday. I'm not a fan of crab (or lobster for that matter), but here's a recipe from the folks at About.com, who say it's great over rice. This recipe from AllRecipes uses dry sherry and sour cream, and here's a recipe for Crab Meat Newburg Casserole.

Not to be confused with fruit cake! We'll get to that in December.

Today is National Date Nut Bread Day. I don't bake enough. And I certainly don't make bread enough. That's something I should change this fall and winter.

AllRecipes has a date nut bread recipe that has gotten some good reviews. This one from Dr. Gourmet uses Splenda and unsweetened applesauce. Here's one from hugs.org, and here's one that uses Tabasco Sauce, believe it or not. CajunCookingRecipes.com has one for Apricot-Date Nut Bread with Caramel Sauce.

We all know that Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. Vacations are ending, kids are going back to school, and even though it might still be warm there's something that has changed in the air compared to August. There's still time for one more cookout though!

AllRecipes has a great selection of foods you can make today, whether you're having a cookout or just making something to eat inside. How about a Bucket Salad, or maybe some Factory Workers Chicken? Or how about the Cholesterol King Heart Stopper 3000, a giant party sandwich? If you're feeling guilty about that you can always eat a Watermelon Fruit Bowl for dessert.

Check out that first link above for all the recipes, categorized by different themes: America's Melting Pot, This Land is Your Land, and Big Appetites, Unite.

OK, now this is getting rather specific, eh?

It's not National Ice Cream Day (though it is National Ice Cream Month), it's National Peach Ice Cream Day. So, if you don't like peaches than you're out of luck and you have to eat broccoli all day long.

This is timing that actually makes sense. Sometimes you don't know why a certain holiday falls on a certain day or in a certain season, but it's summer so having a day set aside for an ice cream flavor seems right, and peaches are a summer fruit and sound awfully refreshing.

Here's a Peach Ice Cream recipe from TexasCooking .com, and here's one from AllRecipes.

P.S. This past Sunday was National Ice Cream Day??? How the heck did that go by unnoticed?

Today, it's approximately 2000 degrees outside (around 2100 in my apartment), and I don't feel like turning on my oven or even eating anything hot. I think a salad would hit the spot, and this recipe from Jessica over at AllRecipes sounds interesting (and by interesting I mean "hmmm...I never thought of putting those things in the same salad").

It's the Watermelon Summer Salad, and besides refreshing, cool watermelon, you also get feta cheese, black olives, and sliced red onion. However, Jessica tells us not to be scared by the ingredients,. They work well together. Full recipe after the jump.

I'm not a big coffee fan. Love the flavor, but it upsets my stomach. But I do have some iced coffee drinks during the summer, as long as there is some chocolate or mocha element in it. I like the Starbucks Frappuccino in the glass bottles (Mocha flavor), and I'm a fan of Nestle's Iced Java syrup.

This recipe has me a bit confused, though maybe it's just because I'm not a coffee guy. It's from allrecipes.com and it's a recipe for iced coffee. Do you really need a blender to make iced coffee? Or is this literally for iced coffee, a thicker drink, and not the cold coffee drink we're used to?

I'm a big fan of pasta. I like the flexibility and options you have with it. I used to make this dish I liked to call "Rigatoni Sassone" (it's great when a food you love rhymes with your name). It was basically rigatoni mixed with various vegetables and then tossed with parmesan and cheddar cheese, served with rosemary and olive oil bread. It was cheap and easy, but I haven't had it in a while.

I thought of that after seeing this recipe on AOL Food (from allrecipes.com). I'm not a fan of vodka, though I guess it won't make that much of an impact, right?

I have a love/hate relationship with olives. Or maybe a like/hate relationship. I like olives, many kinds, but they're not the type of food I ever think of buying myself. I just don't. If I'm with friends who order a pizza with olives on it or I'm at party where they are served or I find them in a salad, I'll eat them. But they're not something I really think about otherwise.

But I do like them on pizza, which makes me want to try this gourmet pizza pie that also utilizes brie cheese.

Back in April, we noted that Reader's Digest bought Allrecipes.com and there was some speculation that they might change the user-friendly site for the worse, especially since they said that they planed to use it as "the main portal to its other magazines and websites." So far, there really have been no major changes to the site, but it appears to have just undergone a major facelift. The new site (there is a site tour so you can figure out how to use it) seems to have given a much more prominent space to affiliated magazines and advertising partners and also seems to put more emphasis on the few top-rated recipes from every category. The biggest change is in layout. Instead of the fairly well-spaced pages that we were used to, where all of the non-recipe content was grouped on the right side of the page, it now seems that every bit of the screen is utilized, drawing attention away from the recipe.

They still have a great recipe database, though, so whether you like the new layout or not, there are still plenty of reasons to use the site.

Taking their media empire online, Reader's Digest has just announced the purchase of Allrecipes.com for $66 million. The publisher had only 7 magazines in its organization eight years ago, but today they have 20 in publication, as well as 40 websites. Their magazines include Taste of Home and Everyday with Rachael Ray, in addition to their flagship magazine, Reader's Digest. A company spokesman said "it instantly gives us Seattle cool and online credibility." The sale also gives them a large advertising revenue, as the major source of income for Allrecipes.com was through advertisements placed on their site.

Reader's Digest plans to make Allrecipes.com the center point of its online operations, the main portal to its other magazines and websites, potentially taking content from it to put into some of its printed media. Though spokespeople from the company denied it, the move is a fairly obvious attempt to attract younger readers to the pages of Reader's Digest.

Allrecipes.com is a user-supported community comprised of 1.8 million members, the majority of whom are home cooks. Membership, which is free, allows users to create online profiles, share recipes and leave feedback on the recipes that other users have posted. In February, it was the third most popular food site on the web in terms of page views, behind the Food Network and Kraft Foods.