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by SB Sarah | January 25, 2012 | Wednesday at 11:50 am | 27 Comments

Via Publisher's Lunch (Free reg. req.): recipe site AllRecipes was purchased by Meredith Corp for $175 million dollars. Among the final four bidders: Random House and Amazon.com.

AllRecipes is a site I use frequently, and the strength of the community there is based on reviews and commentary on the recipes. I rarely use a recipe that doesn't have reviews and comments, especially from folks who have modified it to suit their tastes.

The strength of AllRecipes is in the community of reviewers and their commitment to critique and improvement more than just the database of recipes, and with the number of times I refer to that site in a week, I'm not surprised it went for $175mm.

Reviews, y'all. They're valuable! Who'd have thought?

What recipe sites do you use? Do you use AllRecipes?

Reported by Jane on Twitter, and by Melanie in my inbox: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which I reviewed here back in July 2011, has been nominated for an Oscar™ for Short Film (Animated).

As Jane noted, Morris Lessmore is a story book app with an accompanying film, and was never released in theaters. The fact that it was nominated for an Oscar™ makes me absurdly happy, as it was one of the most touching films I've seen. I purchased the storybook app and the film for my children last summer, and they still watch and read it regularly.

Curious about it? This one is a great Oscar film to watch - it's heartbreaking, hopeful, beautiful and not 2 hours long! You can purchase the film and watch it on iTunes. And it turns out a hardcover version will be released in July 2012 (Goodreads | Amazon | BN).

Also, complete nonsequitur: I love that I'm more familiar with the animated films than any of the other films nominated this year. Seriously, I'm so surprised that Kung Fu Panda 2 was nominated over Cars 2. There, that's about the extent of my Oscar™ commentary!

ETA: Via James L. Enjoy this Darktower comic, when British Awesomeness collides.

Filed: General Bitching, The Link-O-Lator

Tagged: random house, morris lessmore, meredith, awesomesauce, amazon, allrecipes

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I follow Foodgawker, but a few of my main food blogger staples are Annie's Eats, How Sweet It Is, Smitten Kitchen, and Appetite for China.
Posted by Evangeline Holland on 2012-01-30 01:41:13 I use allrecipes.com frequently, especially when I am looking for ideas of how to put ingredient 1,2,3 that happen to be in my pantry together in some coherent dish. Most of the recipes I use as a base on which to build. I also love to bake, and I'm addicted to the blog and recipe website at King Arthur Flour (www.kingarthurflour.com). It's not just bread recipes either, pretty much the full gamut of anything that might involve flour (cookies, cake, breakfast, etc.)
Posted by sula on 2012-01-29 10:43:48 you should check out this book i just read. i was literally blown away by the narrative of it and the visuals. its an awesome read. http://www.amazon.com/Revelati...
Posted by youcanttouchthis on 2012-01-27 13:57:53 Stepping out of my lurking cave to rave about Sherlock! Lol the second season isn't airing in the US til may, so I stalked streaming websites for it. ITS AMAZING, so I went to the amazonUK site and bought series 1 and 2. #obsessed

And thanks for the link to The Fantastic Flying Books, I'd wanted to see it since the day you reviewed it :)
Posted by Vanessa on 2012-01-26 13:27:51 Stepping out of my lurking cave to rave about Sherlock! Lol the second season isn't airing in the US til may, so I stalked streaming websites for it. ITS AMAZING, so I went to the amazonUK site and bought series 1 and 2. #obsessed

And thanks for the link to The Fantastic Flying Books, I'd wanted to see it since the day you reviewed it :)
Posted by Vanessa on 2012-01-26 13:26:34 I <3 AllRecipes. And while some of the comments make me ::facepalm:: (exactly for the example cited above), generally I find them useful. Especially when they talk about other ways of cooking (such as you can do this in a slow cooker instead of the oven by doing x). :) Reviews FTW!! I try to be good and review the recipes I made, citing any changes (I didn't have x, so I used y as a substitute).
Posted by Shana McDanold on 2012-01-26 12:37:54 I <3 AllRecipes. And while some of the comments make me ::facepalm:: (exactly for the example cited above), generally I find them useful. Especially when they talk about other ways of cooking (such as you can do this in a slow cooker instead of the oven by doing x). :) Reviews FTW!! I try to be good and review the recipes I made, citing any changes (I didn't have x, so I used y as a substitute).
Posted by Shana McDanold on 2012-01-26 12:36:26 $175 million?! Wow, I hope they don't change the site too much. I love it the way it is now.
Posted by barklesswagmore on 2012-01-26 10:59:49 I could happily strangle the writing team at Pixar for Cars2. My 3 year old went mad for shooting things with imaginary guns immediately upon watching it. *headdesk* I guess that's what I get for thinking "hey the first one was age appropriate so the sequel should be too..." #momfail
Posted by Reneesance on 2012-01-26 10:20:36 "Although it simultaneously amuses and irritates me that so many of the reviews seem to go like this: "Fantastic recipe! I used cottage cheese in place of the beef, and replaced the butter with anchovy paste. Also, I heated it gently for 10 minutes in a double boiler rather than the two hours in a 400-degree oven suggested by the author. Definitely a keeper!" "

I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees stuff like that and thinks, "Um, it's a keeper? It's not even the same recipe anymore!" And don't say "This recipe is perfect!" if you felt you had to make alterations to it - otherwise, it's more accurate (although more arrogant-sounding) to say "with my alterations, the recipe is perfect."
Posted by LG on 2012-01-26 07:16:23 I heard that Season 2 will end with Sherlock's death (which will make me yell and curse some more, even though I know it's coming), but that there are plans for a third season. I hope that what I heard about a third season is true.

Glad to hear that Season 2 is good. Even if you had said otherwise, the BBC is already guaranteed to get my money for it. I'm hooked.
Posted by LG on 2012-01-26 07:13:58 Punchfork, but also whatever comes up. Cookbooks: Bittman's How to Cook Everything, Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and Page and Dornenburg's The Flavor Bible.
Posted by Pam Regis on 2012-01-26 06:36:05 I use AllRecipes extensively, and like you, I rely heavily on reviews.

Although it simultaneously amuses and irritates me that so many of the reviews seem to go like this: "Fantastic recipe! I used cottage cheese in place of the beef, and replaced the butter with anchovy paste. Also, I heated it gently for 10 minutes in a double boiler rather than the two hours in a 400-degree oven suggested by the author. Definitely a keeper!"
Posted by hechicera on 2012-01-26 06:13:59 I'm another Epicurious.com fan. Also, try lavarenne.com. Anne Willan has some incredibly fabulous recipes. Everyone should try her tomato tantin.
Posted by Lil on 2012-01-25 21:35:51 Epicurious.com and Food Network. Also random browsing.
Posted by MissB2U on 2012-01-25 20:03:19 Tasty Kitchen
Posted by Alexa on 2012-01-25 19:01:29 I said bad words when I got to the end of Sherlock S1. I was very grateful that I knew going in there would be a second season. If I'd gotten to the end and not known, oy. There would have been screaming.

BTW, Season 2 is good.
Posted by De on 2012-01-25 17:52:10 I love AllRecipes. Not only will I always find a recipe I like but the comments are invaluable to see how people tweaked it and made it work. Since I completely cook using a recipe as a suggestion, I like the community there and how they do it to.

Totally proves the value of online community.
Posted by Lori on 2012-01-25 16:36:46 Your review coincided with a co-worker's I-pad purchase & a visit from her young granddaughter so I recommended it to her. She brought her I-pad in afterwards to show me the story. Needless to say two other coworkers and I were all gathered round, tears streaming by the end. I hope it gets everything it deserves.

And while I'm not a huge review reader, Goodreads has been a lot of fun for both expanding and deleting titles from my tbr list.
Posted by Donna on 2012-01-25 16:24:04 The animation and the moving images are part of what make the book app so appealing, so, yeah, I'm not sure what the hardcover would be like - though on illustration alone it will be beautiful.
Posted by SB Sarah on 2012-01-25 15:02:31 The animation and the moving images are part of what make the book app so appealing, so, yeah, I'm not sure what the hardcover would be like - though on illustration alone it will be beautiful.
Posted by SB Sarah on 2012-01-25 15:01:37 I'm glad I wasn't the only one with that reaction, LG.
Posted by H. Vert on 2012-01-25 13:58:03 And also, I love Sherlock. I bought the first season as a present for myself, for doing something I really didn't want to do, and it turned out to be a very, very good present. Except then I made pained noises when I got to the end and it turned out to be a cliffhanger.
Posted by LG on 2012-01-25 13:45:48 I don't pay much attention to which sites my recipes come from - I just do a search for what I'd like in Google and start clicking until I find something where the ingredients and directions sound appealing, hopefully accompanied by reviews and/or pictures (not so much to see what it looks like, but in the hopes that the person has actually used the recipe). However, I do more recipe searching ("I have a specific thing I'd like to make, and I need a recipe for it") than recipe browsing ("I'm not really sure what I'd like to make...ooh, this looks good!"). For recipe browsing, I still rely on cookbooks.

I'm sure I've gotten stuff from AllRecipes, but I've also gotten several recipes from food blogs.
Posted by LG on 2012-01-25 13:40:51 Big Oven! I use that.
Posted by shiloh walker on 2012-01-25 13:22:35 I am not surprised that Kung Fu Panda 2 was nominated over Cars 2. Kung Fu Panda 2 had a coherent storyline and character arcs that continued from the first movie. I'm at least half convinced Cars 2 started as a fanfic... one of the bad ones. "Ok, now Lightning McQueen and Mater get involved with international spies and they save the day!" Just... what?
Posted by Anna on 2012-01-25 12:22:39 I can't imagine what the hardcover will be like. It's not half as entertaining without the animation, is it?
Posted by janeda on 2012-01-25 12:04:43

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