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Plugged In August 2006 • Vol.17 Issue 8 Page(s) 43-44 in print issue	Add To My Personal Library
Find It Online

Cooking For Engineers
www.cookingforengineers.com

Are you the sort of cook who spends an entire shopping trip comparing kitchen knives? Satisfy your culinary curiosity with Michael Chu’s reviews and recipes. Chu’s homegrown (but thorough) tests let you find the best cutting boards, knives, scales, and other kitchen equipment without the heartache of investing in a product that doesn’t live up to its price tag. The site also has pictorial recipes and an active forum, but our favorite section is Kitchen Notes, which has some great reference material, such as explanations of syrup grades. Don’t miss the Off Topic area’s unusual articles, such as Chu’s adventure with an expired bottle of orange juice.

FitDay
www.fitday.com

If you’re serious about monitoring your lifestyle so you can improve your health and lose weight, this Web site is for you. Cyser Software’s free online fitness tracker lets you create a free diary of your daily activities. The detailed site helps you track workouts and tons of other activities, such as walking, cleaning your house, fishing, gardening, and even driving. As you enter these activities, the site determines the number of calories you burned. You can enter your meals in the Foods section. The site automatically calculates and displays information about the food you’ve eaten, including calories, carbohydrates, fat, and protein. To top it off, you can enter comments in your account’s Journal section and make the Journal public so friends can see how you’re doing.

MyPyramid.gov
www.mypyramid.gov

The USDA released an updated version of its pyramid nutrition guide in 2005. If you want to make sure you’re eating appropriate foods, check The My Pyramid Plan, which tailors the USDA’s new nutrition guidelines to you based on your age, sex, and physical activity. The My Pyramid Plan displays the updated, brightly colored pyramid and suggests quantities of fruits, grains, meats and beans, milk, and vegetables. If you’re looking for more than a quick reference, sign up for a free My Pyramid Tracker account. This personalized service analyzes your activity and food intake and then compares it to the USDA’s nutrition guidelines.

Nutrition.gov
www.nutrition.gov

Starting to wish you took a nutrition course or two in college? Don't worry: You can bone up on important nutrition information without heading to your local college. Nutrition.gov’s Smart Nutrition 101 helps healthy-eating newbies find important nutrition Web sites, such as MyPyramid.gov and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (www.ars.usda.gov). Be sure to check out this section’s Questions & Answers About The New Dietary Guidelines For Americans info. A handy I Want To bar on the right side of the main page supplements the site’s navigation bar with links to food safety info and a nutrient database.

NutritionData
www.nutritiondata.com

Never again wonder whether your dessert is as sinful as it tastes. NutritionData’s online service lets you quickly look up nutrition information for tons of foods and meals, including home-cooked meals and restaurant dishes. The Fast Food Facts section has plenty of restaurants you’ll recognize, including Blimpie, Dairy Queen, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and Subway. The Tools tab boasts a Daily Needs Calculator that requires only some basic information, such as your height, weight, and activity. NutritionData’s free Google Toolbar Button lets you search the database for foods without returning to the NutritionData Web site.

Prepared Pantry
www.preparedpantry.com

If you enjoy baking, you’ll love this baking supply company’s Web site. Prepared Pantry puts its food products into special packaging so they’ll last for long periods of time. You’ll find baking mixes for breads, pancakes, and muffins, as well as important baking ingredients and jams. Of course, the site also offers kitchen supplies, including rolling pins, omelet pans, and muffin pans. We particularly like the Library, which offers articles and online baking lessons for various situations and people. You can also find archives of the site’s newsletters in the Library section. If you’re looking for a recipe or article in a hurry, scroll to the mini site map at the bottom of any page.

Compiled by Joshua Gulick
Illustrated by Lindsay Anker

That’s News To You

Finding the appropriate Usenet discussion group to match your interests can be a monumental task. So each month, we scour tens of thousands of newsgroups and highlight ones that delve into popular topics. If your ISP (Internet service provider) doesn’t carry these groups, ask it to add the groups to its list. This month, we share culinary tips from online chefs.

rec.food.cooking

Your significant other comes home with an unusual fish, and your cookbooks aren’t offering any ideas. Where should you turn? Usenet, of course. This active group resolves all kinds of cooking crises. This is one of the most entertaining groups we’ve encountered.

alt.bread.recipes

This group is the best thing since sliced . . . well, we couldn’t help ourselves. Discuss bread machine difficulties, ingredients, and techniques with these bakers. As with many Usenet groups, you’ll have to dodge the occasional off-topic thread.

alt.support.diet

There’s no need to face the challenges of losing weight alone. Users here cheer each other on and discuss exercising tips, as well as dieting. Marketers sometimes pose as real users here, but long-time group users quickly sniff out the ads.

Share The Wares

Some of the best apples in the online orchard are the free (or free to try) programs available for download. Each month we feature highlights from our pickings. This month, we spot a digital recipe box.

BigOven Deluxe
www.bigoven.com

Not sure what to cook for dinner tonight? Browse your illustrated recipes for inspiration. BigOven Deluxe supplies tons of recipes that include mouth-watering photos.

The Internet is awash with mediocre recipe software, so we’re glad to see a program that gets it right. Big Oven has great features (including a rating system, detailed recipe-making and nutrition tools, and shopping lists), but it’s the program’s interface that really makes Big Oven shine. Gone are the days of switching to a different tab to see a recipe’s picture: A large photo of your favorite dish appears above the recipe’s ingredients section. Thanks to handy toolbars that line the top and side of the main window, we found that we rarely bothered to browse the standard File, Edit, View, and Tools menus. Although you’ll recognize most of the buttons right off the bat, you can hover the pointer over any icon for a short description.

The main features are truly features. A star rating system lets you bury the bloopers and keep the keepers close at hand. Many of the included recipes already have ratings, but you can edit them with a few clicks of the mouse. The shopping list feature can create a shopping list from any recipe, complete with descriptions of the grocery store departments that most likely house the ingredients. You can also plan meals with the included Calendar software: Simply drag the recipe into your calendar and then choose the number of servings you’d like to prepare. BigOven automatically scales the recipe’s ingredient list so you won’t use too many (or too few) avocados in your guacamole. To top it off, the program offers nutrition information for each recipe.

BigOven lets you post your own recipes to its huge online recipe database. You can also search the database and easily copy entire recipes (including their pictures) right to your computer. Of course, if you’d prefer not to import recipes individually, you can also download free files that have thousands of recipes from BigOven’s Web site.

You can print any recipe, but if you haven’t yet put a computer on your kitchen counter, we suspect you’ll be shopping for one shortly after trying BigOven. Try BigOven Deluxe free or buy it for $34.95. You can also buy the Starter Edition (which has some feature limitations) for $9.95.

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