You're gonna like this

For a while, I've been meaning to share about this fabulous website that my sweet husband told me about.  It was listed in Newsweek among their top 50 websites of the year, or something like that.  I started using it occasionally, and it's pretty awesome.

The website is www.supercook.com, and here's how it works.  You go to this website and type in a list of ingredients you have on hand and it gives you recipes based on what you already have in your kitchen!  It has a database of over 30,000 recipes, so no matter what recipes you list, you are bound to get at least a few (or a hundred) ideas!

At first, I thought it would be a pain to type in every ingredient I have, but it is so not.  You don't really have to type anything...it's more like just clicking on most of what you have from a word bank.  As you start to list ingredients,  it immediately starts showing you recipes that require only those ingredients.  It will also give you a list of recipes that you have most of the ingredients for and maybe only need 1 more thing.  Does that make sense?

Here's a couple of ways I've used it.  I was making banana bread and half way through I realized I didn't have baking powder.  Well, not one to throw out perfectly mushed bananas, I just clicked on supercook.com and listed the ingredients I did have.  Of course, it popped up a whole page of recipes for banana bread and the like that didn't require baking powder!  Score!

Another time, I had chicken in the fridge that needed to be used that day.  Tired of the same ol' recipes, I popped over to supercook and viola... new recipes with ingredients that I already had!  Each time you log on it saves the ingredients you list, so you don't start from scratch each time.  If you've run out of something, just remove it.  Pretty cool, huh?  My favorite feature, however, is that you can mark the ingredients that you specifically want to use.  Like, I can list everything in my kitchen and get hundreds of recipes.  But, if I really want to use that zucchini in the back of my fridge before it goes bad, I just mark it and it will give me only recipes calling for ....you guessed it, zucchini!

This website could also make it very easy to shop sales.  Just buy what's on sale rather than menu shopping.  Punch in what you bought.  And presto... a creative and thrifty menu for the week!

I know, I know.   This post was waaay too long for promoting a cooking website.  But, trust me.  You're gonna like it.  ;)  Happy cooking!