Remember the good old days? You'd lounge out on the porch in the summer, licking away at your Slo-Poke Sucker, Jr.? Sadly, I'm too young (my summers days were spent at sleep-away camp, divided into organized activities like volleyball and instructional swim) -- but if you do have nostalgia for foods or sweets that are no longer easily available, check out Hometown Favorites, a site dedicated to selling food items that are currently difficult to find.

The site features a grocer, a gift center, and a candy store that lets you search by decade (though admittedly, there's a lot of overlap). Some of the items are pretty recent and others I don't think really qualify as hard to find, but it was still fun to scroll through and see what the store has to offer.

My favorite "oh yeahhhh..." moment was when I spotted Maypo oatmeal -- my dad loves the stuff and used to make it all the time when I was little. What do you think, any old favorites? Other sites offering similar products?

Have you ever wished that you could make a Cherry Slurpee at home? Maybe you're a fan of Benihana's Japanese Fried Rice and want to recreate it in your kitchen. Then I do believe there's a website out there for you. Top Secret Recipes is a site that says it has broken the codes on most of the famous restaurant dishes out there so that you can make them on your own, without a trip to Applebee's, the Cheesecake Factory or Boston Market.

They've got a deep archive of recipes, although most of them require payment to access. There is a good stash of free recipes, including one for Arby's classic Jamocha Shake (which has always been a weakness of mine). It's a fun site to surf around as well, just to check out all the restaurant-style possibilities.

[via JoshSpear.com]

There certainly isn't a lack of good recipe sites out there on the web, especially with the number of food bloggers who share their personal recipes on their blogs, but I coudn't halp but point out Yummy Fun because of how cute the site is. (The site is very loud, so turn down your speakers! - Thanks, Barry!)

Yummy Fun is a colorful, interactive site that comes from Clare Crespo, author of Hey There, Cupcake! and The Secret Life of Food, both books that find the fun in food. Yummy Fun is probably geared toward kids, with the cartoon recipe box that has recipes for such things as Bugs in Amber and Chocolate Moose, but I think it's still fun to poke through.

The concept of a restaurant guidebook is becoming increasingly outdated. The books are rarely up to date and, although they can be carried around by travelers easily, just can't offer the user the same kind of immediate response - and an interactive one, at that - as online, user-driven restaurant guides. Chowhound, Yelp and Citysearch are some of the leaders of this genre, along with similar user-review driven online forums. Zagat, which was unique in the restaurant guide book field in that it based its "reviews" on user commentary, recently decided that it needed to move to a similar online format, where users could offer real-time opinions, in order to remain competitive.

Or, at least, to attempt to remain competitive.

Is there any more room left in the restaurant discussion board field for a newcomer? Given that people have expressed dissatisfaction with the way that Chowhound is run (and they way that the site looks), there just might be.

[via eater la ]

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!]

Starting today, the countdown to Christmas really kicks off. There are gifts to buy, cards to mail and cookies to bake. When it comes to baking cookies as holiday gifts, there are two schools of thought. One says to stick with a tried-and-true recipe that you aren't likely to accidentally screw up. The other says that there is no better time to try some new recipes than when you are going to be doing a lot of baking anyway. Personally, I'm in favor of trying new recipes and there are plenty of places to find them this year. The Food Network has their 12 days of cookies newsletter, with recipes delivered via e-mail, and Cooking Light has a cookie countdown, where recipes are revealed on their site week-by-week. Allrecipes also has a special holiday baking section on their site and will post one recipe to it each day. Finally, both Bon Appetit and Gourmet have holiday cookie slideshows

And if you really feel uncomfortable giving away something you've never baked before, try making two batches so you'll have one to taste-test first!

With the information overload that gets hurled at us on a daily basis regarding health, nutrition and dieting, we might get a little confused. One day it increases your metabolism, the next day it makes you fat. If we listened to everything we read on the Internet, we'd be drinking water and eating...nothing.

However, to help keep us straight with information, Consumer Reports has put together a short list of dieting and weight loss websites. These sites were chosen based on how helpful the sites are, rating parameters like ease of use and clear disclosure of sponsorship policies. The sites are not rated for how well the diet itself works. We're posting the list here, but click over to Consumer Reports for the details on each site:

• WebMD
• The Biggest Loser Club
• eDiets
• The Sonoma Diet
• The South Beach Diet
• Weight Watchers
• Light N Fit
• Trim Life

You know the drill. You and your pals want to go out for dinner, but the reliable old places are well, getting a little played out. You want to try a new place, but how do you know what the new places are, let alone which ones have good food, a good bar, or a good scene?

At one time, we might have looked back through the archives of our local newspapers for professional restaurant critics' reviews. These days however, more and more people are turning to websites that aggregate reviews from average, everyday customers like you and me. These websites, like Yelp, CitySearch, Angie's List and Yahoo Local, allow "citizen" reviewers to post ratings and reviews, and it has businesses changing their approach to marketing. Where once restaurants catered to professional critics, now they must take into account all their potential customers.

Do you use these sites when you need to make a decision about a restaurant? If so, why? And which sites do you find the most helpful?

Recognizing that television is not the sole media source that children are exposed to, British ministers are wondering whether a proposal that bans junk food ads on television will be effective. As a result, they are now considering whether to add restrictions to the ad content of websites, computer games, cinemas and packaging, as well as corporate school sponsorships. Such measures "could be voluntary or compulsory depending on the response of the food industry." Strict measures like these are being supported by the Labour Party and various parent groups.

The Food Standards Agency, backing the ban, has devised a "nutrient profiling system" to identify "junk foods" according to their nutritional information. It could be used to determine whether or not a food product could be advertised if a ban becomes legislation.

Ofcom, a television regular, thinks that measures like this seem too strict. A pre-9pm television ban alone would cost networks and advertisers at least £141 million, but there is not telling what the cost of essentially prohibiting "junk food" ads would be.

Diet is definitely a word with a capital "D". It strikes fear into the hearts, stomachs and mouths of many who associate the word with dry, flavorless rice cakes and endless bowls of cabbage soup. But fear not: there are more than a few dieting blogs to help get you through the new year without any new pounds.

• On Slashfood, we ran a Healthy New Year series of posts with tips to get you through your day: breakfast, bringing a lunch to work, eating lunch out, snacking, tasty dinners and worry-free desserts.
• Hungry Girl offers advice, diet tips and tricks and a few of her own recipes to help you lose any lingering holiday pounds.
• Calorie Lab has a calorie counter, BMI calculator and an up-to-the-minute health news section.
• I Ate a Pie reviews any and all "healthy" diet foods, from low-carb to fat-free.
• Diet-Blog tracks down any and all diet trends, truths and lies. It's a great source for diet-related news.
• Kalyn's Kitchen is the blog of a dedicated low-carber, who puts together lots of easy to follow recipes with great photos.
• Baking Low Fat has - you guessed it - a collection of low-fat baked goods, from breads to brownies.

These are not even a small percentage of all the blogs and websites that regularly or occasionally cover dieting and healthy eating, but they're a good place to start. If you want to start with a few recipes of your own, check out the Low Carb and Healthy Living sections of Allrecipes, for inspiration.