"website" news and stories

If you are female and often browse the internet to find various items of interest, this may be a good site for you to check out. Much like Digg, Netscape, and the like, Sk*rt features reader-submitted articles, webpages, blogs, videos, etc. which you can vote for if you enjoyed it. The main difference with Sk*rt is that it was designed by women and is very female-centric, focusing on categories such as food, fashion, mind/body/spirit, arts & crafts, parenting, and more. Of course our focus here is their food section, naturally, but the rest looks pretty interesting too.

Best part is - you can use this site for your own purposes. If you are simply looking for some interesting ideas, you can browse what others have submitted. If you are looking to share info or increase traffic on your own blog or website, you are able to submit your own links.

Besides, when it helps us to find such items as chocolate bubble-wrap, it just can't be a bad thing.

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Even before Chowhound became a part of the Chow network, users frequently had problems with deletions. Controversial posts and less than glowing reviews of certain restaurants were deleted without explanation and some users found that their posts were deleted with a high frequency, regardless of the topic. Since the message board is a public forum, it is perfectly appropriate for moderators to remove offensive content, but when non-offensive reviews of "off the table restaurants" and other posts relevant to the website were taken down without explanation, many users grew frustrated. The problems persist with the new Chowhound, leaving many former contributors to head to different, more open minded, websites.

It appears that Eater is one such site because they have just offered to post anything that has been inexplicably removed from the Chowhound site. They are able to do this because the "offending" posts are not removed from the Chowhound feed as quickly as they are from the site, so there is a window of time where it is possible to retrieve the posts. Of course, you will have to contact the staff to let them know if your post was stricken, but it will be interesting to see what types of pieces are selected for removal.

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When Allrecipes redid their layout back in October, the design was met with less than positive reviews from users, who complained about the readability of the text, the number of advertisements and the difficulty of actually locating the main recipe on the page. Epicurious, one of the other leading online recipe sites, is now testing out a new look for their recipe pages. Fortunately, they don't seem to be going to extremes with their makeover.

The old view had a banner ad at the top of the recipe and put the user ratings, menu suggestions and related links down the left-hand side of the page. The new layout eliminates the top banner ad and moves the user reviews onto the right-hand column. The ads that used to appear in the sidebar have been eliminated as well and that space is now occupied with links to reference guides and the Epicurious recipe feed link. Along the top of the recipe, there are several tabs that make it easy to switch between the photo, reviews and the recipe itself without relying on the browser's back button.

Overall? The changes look good and it probably won't be long before Epicurious switches over to the new layout completely.

[thanks, alanna!]

The idea behind most food websites, food blogs included, is to write about good food. Good recipes, excellent restaurants and tasty products are among the things frequently written up on these sites. Wild Recipes has a slightly different goal, however. The site is dedicated to the weirdest, most outrageous - by which they usually mean disgusting - foods that people actually eat.

Old fashioned scrapple, Rocky Mountain oysters, head cheese and brains are all included on the site, but there are far stranger dishes than the ones that simply involve cooking the less appetizing bits of animals. For example, how would you feel about a Spam milkshake (pictured) with anchovies, mustard and beer? Or would you be likely to put a few slices of Cheddar cheese in your morning coffee then "slurp down the glob of melted cheese" once you've finished off the liquid? Granted, the cheese coffee is unappealing in a way that is different from the "oysters," but that doesn't make it any less disgusting.

Most of the entries have recipes should you be so inclined to try them and there are seven pages of dishes to choose from, and just about all of them are accompanied by a story describing how the submitter first came across the dish.

[via neatorama]

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According to some estimates, the average Thanksgiving dinner can have up to 4,500 calories - and that's per person, not for the whole meal. No wonder more than a few of us need to loosen our belts afterwards! But the holiday comes only once a year and it would be a shame to miss out on some of our favorites, from mashed potatoes and gravy to pecan pie. One solution is to keep all the same dishes, but lighten up the recipes slightly. The website Eat Better America - which is primarily geared towards providing simple, straightforward nutrition and fitness information to keep you living and eating healthy - has one particular feature that might come in handy for Thanksgiving prep. Called Healthify My Recipe, users of the site can submit favorite recipes and have them lightened up by the EBA food experts, cutting back the calories and fat without skimping on flavor. They already have recipes for gravy, pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes up, with both the "healthified" and "unhealthified" versions, all of which are perfect for Thanksgiving. In addition to the altered recipes, the site also has a basic recipe section, with tasty, but good for you, recipes geared towards those with specific eating concerns.

[Thanks, Nichole!]

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