Sources of Foodie Inspiration (and Recipe Raves!)

BUT, if you do like to cook or have the slightest interest in preparing food, you've likely explored or experienced some number of the thousands of recipe sites, YouTube kitchen videos, foodie blogs and televised chef cooking demonstrations available to help plan a menu, or simply a meal, you want to prepare.

Searching for a specific recipe ? for us ? is a structured, left-side-of-the-brain type of task.  For this exercise, we are happy to turn to trusted cookbooks and/or encyclopedic websites to find what we?re looking for quickly and efficiently.  Online resources are usually the easiest way to pinpoint the details, and some of our favorite recipe references include Cookstr, Epicurious, Kitchen Monki, and Project Foodie.  (See our post, Best of the Web - Top 10 Recipe Resources).

But there?s another side to our menu planning.  It involves the right-side-of-the-brain - our artsy side - and it isn?t often satisfied by the first approach.  Finding inspiration for a particular dish ... indulging in our cuisine creativity (however limited on capability we might be ;-)... identifying the right mix of seasonal, local, available ingredients for our gathering ... all this involves more of a visual brainstorming type of exercise. 

What's needed are flavorful pictures and descriptive techniques to trigger our foodie imagination, combined with simple enough cooking steps to give us the confidence that our efforts will be a success.

Where is this magical combination to be found?

Here are 20 delicious blogs that satisfy our culinary creativity and contribute well to the ?foodie? component of our entertaining.  We?ve also shared a post from each focused on a recipe that inspired us (and was delicious enough to receive rave reviews!).