Cooking blog round-up

Disclaimer: When I was a journalist, I hated blogs. I found them to be unfounded sources of gossip and basically no better than your average tabloid. Then again, I used to live in a community with an active blog presence that had an ongoing ... rivalry? ... with the newspaper I worked for. I don't know if rivalry was the word, but I worked at a twice-weekly newspaper and the relationship I had with the bloggers reminded me of how much I hated radio broadcasts and TV broadcasters when I worked at dailies. This hatred probably stems from my competitiveness and hating to be scooped, etc.

Anyway - that was a weird rant ... back on topic! Now, as the proprietor of not one but THREE blogs, you can probably tell I'm something of a blog addict. And this cooking blog came from reading a lot of excellent ones that are out there on the blogosphere.

I thought I'd take today and share a handful of the really good ones that I like:

1) This one IS first because I wouldn't have half the recipes in my bookmarks without it: www.foodgawker.com I'm going to warn you right off - if you like cooking, you might become an addict after visiting what has to be classified as foodie porn. People from all over the world (I get aggravated by the metric system on a regular basis with this site ...) submit pictures and suggestions to the moderators of this site, who in turn post the creme de la creme of food recipes from the blogosphere on this site on a daily basis.

2) ThePioneerWoman.com is also an incredible web site that I access daily. I wouldn't go as far as saying the PW adheres to the "simple and lazy" mantra, but she has some of the most accessible recipes that I've found on the Net. She also has a wicked sense of humor and a writing style that I really admire.

3) Dragon's Kitchen. Again, not the "simple and lazy" category, but this person has some incredible recipes up her sleeve.

4) I include this one because I admire this person's tenacity: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/
This woman has vowed to post one recipe per day for a year using nothing but her collection of crock pots. Not every recipe is a winner, but there are some good things to be found.