"allrecipes.com" news and stories

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.