Food Blogs

Lately I haven't been particularly inspired to cook much.  I've become dependent on organic frozen pizzas, salads, and take out sushi for dinner (I love living near Masa....), and organic frozen meals for lunches.  The nice part is I can pick and choose options with a low caloric intake.  The bad part, there are only so many options.  Every so often, though, I'll find a food blog that gives a much needed jolt to my culinary laziness.  I just happened across one such blog today by former chef and current Parisian food afficionado David Lebovitz.  He's not a food critic and he doesn't over-dramatize or raise food to levels of snobbery - he just offers great advice on new, simple recipes.  He also offers great advice on places to eat in France, primarily Paris, which has me absolutely itching to travel there!  And unbeknownst to me, he's actually the source of the INCREDIBLE strawberry frozen yogurt recipe that I've been using for a couple of years now - if only I'd realized how fantastic the rest of his blog was back then!

So I'm going to attempt to make a trip to Central Market this weekend and stock up on some good, fresh products so that I can maybe use my new found inspiration to actually cook food!  While I'm at it, here are a couple of other food blogs I frequent for new ideas:

Cannelle et Vanille is one of my favorites.  I've linked to Aran's recipe's many times, which is also why I've pre-ordered her soon to be released cookbook as well!  She also takes THE most incredible pictures.  I've been dying to sign up for one of her cooking/food photography classes, and I'm sure I will one of these days.  They're just a tad pricey.

Fig & Fauna is one of my newer food blogs that I actually discovered on Cannelle et Vanille and the recipes all use ingredients that are grown right there on the Fig & Fauna farm.  The farm is actually located in Florida, which makes me really upset that I never got around to discovering it before I moved away!!!

Joanna Goddard of one of my favorite blogs Cup of Jo has started a Wednesday post series with recipes of the Best ______ Ever!  It targets basic foods that people want to perfect like macaroni and cheese, roasted chicken, peanut butter cookies, and scrambled eggs and it's pretty genius!

More so than food recipes (though they have some great options too), I tend to find way too many cocktail and mixed drink recipes on Tasting Table.  I need to have a giant cocktail party just so I can test them out - like the Gin Gin Mule.  There are some great articles on this site too, some of which I referenced while in L.A. to scope out some excellent restaurant options!  And lately they've been having an ode to Spanish cuisine with gems like this recipe for hazelnut and almond romesco - yum!

And finally, Smitten Kitchen is overwhelmingly egg-y in terms of most of the recipes, but I've dug through and found a few gems that I'm really excited to try like the Homesick Texan Carnitas and a Bacon, Egg, and Leek Risotto (perfect variation on "breakfast for dinner").