Google for your supper

Jill gets Google to figure out what's for dinner:

I just Googled my dinner for the night and realized it might be a fun thing to share.  Choose three items or so from your pantry or fridge and type them into Google.  You should come up with a reasonable recipe (or ten) that you can make without a trip to the grocery.

Tags: Feeding kids

Comments

[Jon Henshaw]

It seems to work best for me if I include the keyword "recipe" in the search.

[Serrina]

Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com) is Gourmet's website - You can do a Recipe Search and get recipes with Star ratings from reviewers, so you'll know if a recipe is good before you attempt it. Also, there's a cookbook called 1-2-3 Low Carbs and other 1-2-3 Cookbooks with 3 item recipes.

[Serrina]

http://www.epicurious.com

[Gazer]

Another way to get recipes. You give it a list of what you have and it gives you a list of things you can make.

http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/

[Mieke]

One of my friends introduced me to this a year or so ago. She called it "fridge googling" :)

[Parent Hacks Editor]

In fact, my Chick Pea and Rice salad recipe was the result of fridge googling!

http://www.parenthacks.com/2006/06/20_minute_dinne.html

Hey, Internet! Parent Hackers have coined a term!

Oh, and I love Epicurious, too. Try the Yeasted Waffle recipe...YUM. Standard weekend fare in our house. I make a vegan version depending on who we're serving (egg replacer and soymilk), but the recipe as written is fantastic, too.

[Betsy]

I second- or third - epicurious. Check out their advanced search options, which let you screen for some dietary sensitivities, speed of recipe, etc.

It's great for using up that random ingredient about to go bad in the fridge!

And the food network's Web site is great, too.

I subscribe to Cooking Light, and their Web site has a robust recipe search feature, too, though I think you must be a subscriber to use it.

[Mike]

Give a man a chick pea and rice salad recipe and he eats for one meal. Teach him to "fridge google" and he eats for life. There, now a new term has been coined AND an old adage has been skewered. And maybe we should just shorten "fridge google" to froogle, because then froogle would be something people actually find useful. :) Oops, just kidding Google overloads. Please let me keep my nifty gmail!
Cool hacks Jill, Asha and other commenters. In fact, I'm "fridge googling" in the kitchen on my laptop right now, and I think I hear some random, long ago abandoned pantry and fridge items calling out to me. Shhh. Did you hear that? Lean in a little. "You complete me!" "You complete me!"

[markowe]

Thought I would make a site dedicated to fridge-Googling. I've been doing it for years, just never called it that (it wasn't Google, once upon a time).

Try some Fridge-Googling yourself!:

http://fridge-googling.blogspot.com

Many's the dinner that has been salvaged thanks to this technique!

[Stu Mark]

I totally want to give a shout out to my defunct cooking blog - http://cookingforleslie.blogspot.com/
It's dedicated to my wife and has a few recipes walked through, for those who want to get into more serious cooking but are intimidated by the thought that gourmet = complicated.

That said, Fridge-Googling is awesome! And, yes, if you include "recipe" in the search, your chances for success increase by an order of magnitude. Sometimes I include the word "easy" as well, or "fast," depending upon my need.