Your Friday Awesome: Food Blogs (Nom Nom)

Joy the Baker: clean plates = happy friends

I have a handful of cookbooks, but I very rarely use them. Because here's the thing: I like cooking - particularly baking - but its not the the process that is always the awesome part. The awesome part is feeding people the food I make. I really like feeding people. But, I don't want to spend forever in the kitchen (though I take pride in my increasing knife skills), so I very rarely use a recipe that wasn't given to me by my my mom or sister, or something I threw together with what was in the fridge (note, that last option does not end well with baking).

Unfortunately, most cook books think seventeen ingredients that you can only get from fancy, pricey specialty stores is totally appropriate for a mid week dinner. Strangely, the exception to this is my old-school Betty Crocker binder. Most of the recipes can be thrown together in twenty minutes with easily found ingredients. And people love everything that has come out of it because, despite what the New York Times tells you, when people want a chocolate chip cookie that is what they want - a simple chocolate chip cookie.

However, while Betty's got the cookies down, I'm not a big roast kind of gal so I've turned to the interwebs for inspiration, and let me tell you, these folks know how it is done. Here are the awesome food blogs I've found:

Cheap Healthy Good is fantastic because (as their name implies) they provide simple, tasty, inexpensive recipies, but very detailed break downs of nutritional information. However, my favorite part is Links of the Week which give you an update from the social conscious food world with a smidge of feminism.

Our Best Bites also has an extensive list of quick, simple and delicious recipes. But they also have an awesome treasure trove of tips on the basics of cooking and food preparation, like how to pick the best cooking oil for the job and how to cut a mango, which came in handy for this next one.

Poor Girl Eats Well: And so easy

Poor Girl Eats Well totally wins the Super Easy Recipe contest hands down. With a limited budget she makes really awesome and super duper easy recipes. So easy that I read her post on Mahi Mahi with Mango Salsa on Monday and made it on Wednesday (with cod) and didn't have to reference the recipe. Oh, and it was delicious.

Joy the Baker: mmmm....butter...

Sometimes you just need butter. Butter makes people happy, especially when mixed with lots of sugar and baked into something that makes the house smell awesome. I have a bit of a crush on Joy the Baker. Not only will she tell you when she drops a cake or she over-whipped her egg whites, or how to substitute buttermilk if you don't have any in the refrigerator (which is handy for someone that bakes on a whim), she also titles posts with things like Bikinis Are Stupid. I'm working up the courage to make this. It's weird, but tempting.

Bittersweet's Chocolate Mountain

And while were on a baking theme, I've yet to try anything from Bittersweet, but it might just be the funniest baking blog yet, mixing jaded sassiness and pop culture trainwreck references in with (sometimes) boxed cake mix. My favorites? Red Velvet Break Up Mug Cake and Heart of Darkness Truffles.

There is only one problem with using your laptop as a cookbook: it tends to get really dirty.

PS: I've also got two friends with food(y) blogs. You can check them out here and here if you want to see how they make more complicated things looks easy.