Web Spy: Foodily

By Laura Dondero

[There are over 100 million sites on the Internet. 100 million! You might think you know about all the important ones (CollegeCandy, Gmail, Google, Facebook…), but there are thousands of other sweet sites out there (like Fellow Up, Swap.com and LiveProfile) and more showing up every day! We get it – it’s not easy or fun sifting through the crap and porn to find those gems, so we’re gonna bring the gems to you. Just sit back, kick up those feet and allow us to introduce you to the diamonds in the internet rough.]

I’ve always been a food lover, but it wasn’t until I moved out on my own that I really developed a fondness for cooking. I’m still only a beginner, so I love trying out new recipes to practice my technique. Lucky for be, the internet is a wealth of information and I’ve discovered tons of great recipe sites on the web — but recently, I discovered one that puts all the others to shame: Foodily.

Foodily (the “-ily” stands for “I love you”) is, according to the site, the largest recipe network on the web. You can access all these recipes by searching for recipes themselves or simply by typing in certain ingredients you like (and/or excluding ingredients you don’t like). From there, Foodily will pull recipes from food blogs and food sites like FoodNetwork.com, FineCooking.com, and Martha Stewart and display them in a side-by-side gallery where you can compare recipes by  glancing at the ingredients and prep times.

Planning your meals is easy with Foodily, since you can just type in the ingredients you have on hand and find only recipes that include those ingredients. It’s perfect for if you’re sick of making the same old chicken dish and want to try something new!

Foodily also has some great social networking features. You can connect to Foodily through Facebook to “Like” recipes and see what recipes your friends like, t00 (well, your Foodily-using ones, at least). The whole idea of Foodily is to inspire conversations between friends about what you’re cooking and eating.

You can also save recipes to an online “menu” and share it on Facebook or use it to create a Facebook event — making planning a dinner party as easy as can be!

On top of all that, Foodily is just plain pretty to look at. Just looking at the beautiful photos for each recipe makes my stomach growl. Which works out well, because now I know exactly how to make them!

Need some more awesome websites to peruse when you should be studying for finals? We’re on it! Check out the other sites that are on Laura’s web radar!