"community" news and stories

Earlier this week, Nicole posted about recipe searches using Google itself, or Cooking with Google. Along those same "help me with what's in my fridge," life-gives-you-lemons kind of lines comes Snacksby.com. Admittedly still in its infancy, Snacksby describes itself as "like MacGyver, but for food." A search for "chicken, cucumbers, corn," which is what's in my fridge now, returned "Don't really expect anything, we've only got like 3 recipes and 12 ingredients here right now anyway. You should totally add a recipe or an ingredient." That may be a bit of an understatement, and some of Snacksby's features-tag clouds, food photo sharing-could be a lot of fun if/when more people start to contribute to the site. It's definitely worth a look. 

Sure, the fast food industry has recently spurred non-fiction books, documentaries and plenty of investigative journalism, but fan fiction? In a similar vein to the LiveJournal community of McDonald's employees, here's an LJ community composed solely of fan fiction based around the McGriddle breakfast sandwich. Really. There's some sci-fi, some suspense, even McGriddle haiku and jokes. For instance: "Q: What do you get when you line up 8 McGriddle Breakfast Sandwiches in a row? A: MMMMMMMM!" I also particularly enjoyed the short story involving the Hamburgler reflecting on his past while "Lying in his cell, doing a "dollar value menu" upstate."

The internet is chock full of recipe sites ranging from the good to the bad. Usually, when I'm researching a recipe, I use a combination of Google and my favorite recipe aggregation sites. The CookbookWiki aims to collect all the world's culinary traditions and recipes into one wiki site. Wikipedia already does a good job of covering food, but perhaps with CookbookWiki's tight focus, it can be an even more invaluable resource for chefs and amateur cooks alike. They already have an aggressive development plan for the content. What do you think about this resource?

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