All You Can Eat

Seattle Times food writer Nancy Leson serves up the best info and tips on Northwest food, cooking, dining and restaurants.

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December 17, 2008 9:08 AM

Foodista.com: a site to behold

Posted by Nancy Leson

So, are you ready to be snowed in? I am. And does this look like a soup day or what? When the weather gets like this, I get a hankering to rummage around in my fridge and cupboards, intent on finding the right ingredients for something warm and substantial. What'll it be? Well, that depends on what I've got on hand. Whatever I find, I can either head to my cookbook collection for inspiration or turn to Foodista.com. Launched today, "the cooking encyclopedia everyone can edit" is a Seattle-based Web site: a collaborative effort "revolutionizing how people learn and share about food and cooking!"

Foodista invites food fiends everywhere (that would be you and me) to join its on-line community and weigh-in on recipes, tweak ingredients, add photographs or link to our own food blogs. "The site has been simmering over the past few years," explains Rebekah Denn, who dished the details behind the new venture and its founders Barnaby Dorfman, Sheri Wetherell and Colin Saunders in her column today.

Call me intrigued. So for the sake of science, I just went into the kitchen, pulled open my grains-and-rice drawer and spied these lentils:

Then I typed "lentils" into Foodista's search box and found this easy recipe for lentil soup. (Lunch? Yes! I've got all the ingredients on hand -- though my parsley plant's probably frozen to death in my garden.) Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it turns out.