Looking for the Lucy that is Juicy?

Gotta love the narrow-targeted ad prowess of Facebook. I was served an ad for a site focused on where you can find a good Jucy Lucy (a cheese-stuffed burger particularly loved up here in it's birthplace of Minneapolis). Do you think Facebook knows I'm a food-obsessed Minnesotan?

JucyLucyRestaurants.com includes a blog, a map and a Wiki where you can post new locations to find Lucy and all her juiciness. I personally get all my Juicy Lucys from Matt's Bar (topped with fried onions, and served with a glass of beer and a basket of fries - always), but clearly I need to expand my horizons.

Halleluja - A new site for Food and Wine Mag

I love reading Food and Wine Magazine (my recipe binder is stuffed with clippings from each issue) but hated the website which I found to be clunky and a bit disorganized. They have recently launched a redesign and at first glance, it's a massive improvement.

Check it!

Yet another social network for foodies - Foodbuzz.com

I've picked up on yet another new social networking site for foodies that is running in beta (Grouprecipes, another social food site I use has been in beta for well over a year). Foodbuzz bills itself as a user driven site that is built to provide highly relevant content to its community members through their search engine. They combine recipes, blogs, user profiles, videos and restaurant reviews with geographical context (I can filter info down to my neighborhood in Minneapolis) and relevancy/popularity attributes based on the consumption of the content. The goal is to push the most relevant content to the top based on user consumption and needs. Sounds heady and a good idea in principle.

The interface is a bit counter-intuitive to my taste, but I'm going to keep playing with it. Some of the videos and blog posts look pretty good and hopefully, I can start finding some other food-enthusiasts nearby to help me break out of my restaurant rut.

Recipes that feel you? Cookthink.com

Ran across this tidbit in my Springwise email:
http://www.springwise.com/media_publishing/personalized_cooking_recipes_m/

This site Cookthink has yet another way to search and serve up recipes - by how you feelin' and what your cravin'. Right now I'm haggard and quickly loosing motivation to keep working tonight - what does Cookthink suggest?

Well, I browsed some tag clouds based on mood and selected "energizing, restorative, decadent and pampering" and got: "Spicy Penne with Shrimp and Mint"

The scary thing is, that sounds really good to me - and I think I have everything at home to make it. Maybe there is something to this . . .

While I'm promoting my professional projects . . thegoodfoodfight.com

I've briefly opened the door to my commercial pursuits here, so I'll go ahead and post one more work-related piece of content and then back to bite&chew as normal.

One of my sites, eatbetteramerica.com is seeking to inject a little fun into learning how to eat healthier. To that end, we've created thegoodfoodfight.com

If I tell you too much more, it kind of ruins it, but it's a mess - in a good way.

Social networking for Foodies - Grouprecipes.com

As if there weren't already enough social networking sites out there, a new site has popped up that I had to try out, despite already having a MySpace site & profile that I sorely neglect. This new site, Grouprecipes.com is focused on connecting foodies to each other. The site is heavy on the web 2.0 stuff (tags, stumbles, groups, etc) but they do allow folks to upload their own recipes and swap info in a free-form fashion with each other as well as form sub groups around specific food topics. I've already set up a basic profile as well as joined the Southern Cooking and the Mexican groups. I haven't submitted any recipes yet, but have already started tagging and saving a few new things I'd like to try. I've also started feeding some of my favorite restaurants into the site with my personal reviews. Seems to still have a relatively low user base, but I'm curious to see if it takes off once the site is out of beta.