Now all you need is Forkchop, a virtual sous chef that takes any recipe – whether inputted manually or pulled from a website – and automatically transforms it into an interactive e-recipe.

Progress is tracked with simple clicks (or taps on phones and tablets): Ingredients can be crossed off once they’re used, and directions can be highlighted or minimized to keep focus on the task at hand.

Mark down tasting notes for different batches (think pound cake with and without the lemon zest) then tweak the original recipe until nothing’s left but the good stuff — sans the illegible pen marks in the margins.

But our favorite feature is how Forkchop can automatically generate recipe-specific grocery lists with the click of a button.

This cooking thing is a piece of cake.

Sad, isn’t it?

Grubwithus has a fix for that: impromptu dinner parties full of strangers who may or may not like one another.

Yikes? Not really. Guests choose from a list of events in their area organized around specific interests, industries, foods — basically any topic that will break the ice among link-minded strangers.

Diners purchase tickets, which cover a two- or three-course family-style meal, tax, and gratuity. Any fun beverages (i.e. alcoholic drinks) are billed individually.

If you’d rather play host, create an event by choosing the neighborhood, approximate number of people, and desired price range ($16, $21, $26, or $38 per person). Give it a catchy title and description, and watch as potential new friends buy tickets for your event.

Already have tons of pals? You can use Grubwithus to organize private events, too.

But where’s the fun in that?

What’s great in reality? Oysters and etouffee on your couch. The wine pairing: three top-notch French bottles from the talented (and picky) connoisseurs at Lot18.

Like its namesake party, the Mardi Gras Masquerade Trio is only available for the next 48 hours — with $0 shipping.

Meaning if you aren’t a Lot18 member, you should sign up for free right now. If you already are, be sure to place your order before 7 a.m. EST on February 23.

The wine may get better with age, but the deal won’t.

Also known as One Size Larger Pants season, Constant Sugar High season, and Awkward Glances from Co-workers season.

So this time around we’re shooting for moderation with the help of RoutineTap. It’s an incredibly versatile progress-tracking site offering customizable daily questions and answers that automatically generate charts and graphs to quantify your entire life.

In our case, we set up measures to track cookie consumption (in the hope that 43 boxes will last a whole year), weight gained, and hours lying awake in bed at night.

The less cookie-obsessed can use RoutineTap to curb, encourage, or simply track everything from spending habits to hours in the gym. Set up multiple questionnaires to see the correlation of your habits, like the effect of four cocktails on your Facebook activity.

The important thing to remember is to not try to steal our Thin Mints — we know exactly how many we have left.

For the Aficionado
Impress even the most experienced wine buff with a bottle of Caymus “Special Selection” Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, a Wine Spectator 93-point powerhouse.

For the Gourmand
A Francophile’s dream, this package pairs artisanal snacks from The Girl & The Fig (a New York Times Top Wine Country pick) with a 91-point rated Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

For the Social Butterfly
Modus operandi: bubbly. Execute that plan to perfection with a half-case of Crémant de Bourgogne — a producer specializing in méthode champenoise since1877 — at a value that competes with one bottle of bubbles at your favorite restaurant.

Netted readers get immediate access, plus a $10 credit to start using today. Cheers to that.

The next time you only have a couple of ingredients lying around the pantry, try FoodPair. You can search by ingredients or filter by personal restrictions for recipes you can make right now.

In fact, if you’re a vegan looking for a spinach-based salad recipe crafted by either Jaime Oliver or Martha Stewart with 6-10 total ingredients, that is oddly specific of you—but totally reasonable on FoodPair. And when you sign up, it remembers your important filters for you. With a single click, you can even add recipes to your “My Recipes” section, where they become sort of your personal online cookbook.

The only thing left to do is grab our trusty Swiss Army Knife and attempt to perfect our trademark 7-Seasoned Danger Stew. Only this time around, we might go easy on the eraser shavings.

We here at Netted love candy, which is why we’ll be treating ourselves to the real deal for Halloween, thanks to Lot18 and their new online gourmet food selections.

Specifically, we’ve got our eyes (and stomachs) on the 32-piece Recchiuti “burgundy box,” complete with chocolates, caramels, and something called “Pâtes de Fruits” we’re sure are delicious and not something we’ll want to share, let alone with children. After all, this is the good stuff.

Plus, Netted readers who sign up for Lot18 will receive a $15 credit to use toward the deliciousness, like lemon verbena-infused chocoloate, salt caramels and cardamom nougat with cocoa nibs.

For those that don’t love chocolate (aka people who scare us year-round) there are other gourmet selections on offer, like artisinal cheese and small-batch roasted coffee.

We, however, will be concentrating on the candy for grownups — consider it part of our “genius” costume.

Fortunately, we’ve found the equivalent of an invisibility cloak: by using Calorific to track no more than portion sizes and ratios of foods, we have retrained ourselves to eat a whole lot better. It’s a very simple app for iPhones and Androids that lets you track your consumption without guilt or complicated calorie plans.

Start by establishing goals and entering some very basic information about yourself, and they’ll provide the information you need to take off the pounds (and eat better). They’re not going to hound you about working out or eating too much bacon because people make mistakes and bacon is the best.

The focus is on a healthy diet so you can look up meals by name, but it’s actually easy to categorize how much you’ve eaten by estimating portions and how good they are for you– great, okay, and bad. Calorific also has a guide for this and, with practice, it becomes so second-nature that documenting each meal doesn’t have to be more than button presses.

The only challenge left for Netted’s collective weight loss battle is to break our addiction to croutons. It just keeps coming back to haunt us.

For expert wine advice, we turn to Lot18 to guide us to the best selections at the best prices. They work hand-in-hand with distributors and well-known wine producers to bring fantastic wines directly to you.

The Lot18 team of procurement specialists are not messing around, either. They’re a collection of former 5-star sommeliers, winery owners and Masters of Wine candidates, making them some of the leading experts in the world.

They’ve also put together a great list of wine accessories, like glasses and decanters, as well as independently produced food items like artisanal cheeses, specialized salt and imported Italian pasta. It’s like they’ve curated the best dinner party you haven’t thrown yet.

The site is currently invite-only, but Netted subscribers receive immediate access, and the first 500 readers to sign up will receive a $15 credittoward their first purchase. Plus, anyone who orders between today and Thursday will be eligible to win a Lot18 credit between $10-$100. Winners will be selected hourly between 10-6PM Eastern each day and emailed with notification.

Now that the magical mysteries of finding amazing wines have been solved for us by this team of amazing curators, all we have left to do is figure out how those magnets work.

Gojee satisfies our cravings with the best handpicked recipes from tried-and-true food bloggers. Like a trusty sous chef, the site tailors itself to your interests and gets to know your food habits the more you use it to search.

The site takes into account what foods you have in your fridge and which ingredients gross you out (or give you hives). Then they ask what you’re craving, and use all this information to deliver you recipes containing exactly what you want to eat.

It’s a little unfair how good they make the food look: browsing results are enormous images of delicious-looking dishes. No, seriously, don’t start browsing while hungry.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some spaghetti and meatballs calling our name.

Enter BiteHunter, a website and handy iOS app that shows you deals based on your location and time of day. It’s easy to specify between Discounts, Daily Deals and Hourly Specials to find a deal you can use, exactly when you’re ready to use it.

The best part might be the ability to switch from a list format to a map overlay. The list sorts offers by distance from your location, while the map shows you exactly where every discount is.

And even if you don’t subscribe to daily emails like Groupon or DailyCandy or LivingSocial, your deeply discounted daiquiris are available at your leisure. Besides making those deals available, they also track restaurants’ social media accounts to ensure all the daily specials are covered as well.

BiteHunter makes it easy to purchase deals right from within the app, with detailed listings providing all the relevant info, from expiration to eligibility.

We plan to start purchasing desert coupons while we’re still eating our entrees. It might sounds crazy to you, but Momma always told us our hard drives are bigger than our stomachs.

Instead Punchfork teaches you to make your own delicious beverages (and food!) with their inspiring recipes curated via social media.

The site measures how often recipes are shared and discussed, with the most talked-about recipes earning higher popularity scores. It’s a handy measure for how appealing, seasonal, or just plain delicious any given recipe sounds.

Recipes come from a variety of quality sites, like Epicurious, The Kitchn, Serious Eats, 101 Cookbooks and Pioneer Woman, and are added just minutes after being published elsewhere on the web.

Be forewarned, the display format is not for the hungry: oversize magazine-style photos make browsing inspirational but mouthwatering. For the more practical user, it’s easy to search by ingredients (perfect for when all you have in the fridge is broccoli, eggs, and 4 boxes of baking soda).

It’s the perfect excuse to don a novelty apron and oven mitts, and maybe even cook something while wearing them!

We were excited to find Rouxbe, an exemplary online cooking school. We rarely order out anymore because we’re riveted by all the beautiful videos and anxious to try out all the four-star techniques and tips.

Each lesson includes a discussion board and a short quiz. Should you ever get a question wrong, the correct answers lead you right to the section of the video the question is referring to. Every video is divided for easier viewing and the list of necessary materials is available before you begin either cooking or viewing.

Even the simple essentials like using a chef’s knife to cut with the rolling technique are exquisitely detailed. We love it so much we’re proud to offer Netted subscribers 20% off subscriptions by entering “netted” when you sign up.

It’s like Mama Netted always said: “Sharing is caring and we all have to eat for the rest of our lives so why not teach each other how to cook?” We’re pretty sure that’s not quite the saying, but we still love her.

We’re not entirely sure what he meant, but using the AG Wine app for iPhone and iPad has made discovering wines a lot less confusing. It’s a comprehensive guide that lets you browse wines by region, varietal, style or food pairing.

It’s an educational wine shop companion, making the process of selecting the type of wine you’re really after a lot simpler. The app is very well organized, so finding information is lightning fast.

The app doesn’t focus on specific producers or brands unlike other pocket sommeliers. Instead, they use regional strengths and accurate descriptions so you can make your own decisions. Put simply, it makes buying wine about discovery again.

Android users should check out Swirl Pro. The app searches the powerful Snooth database for recommendations, and lets you keep track of the wines you’ve tried with a camera and note system.

We think we’ve reached the next level of funk because now we can’t get “Raspberry Beret” out of our heads every time we go wine shopping.

Food On The Table keeps the fridge full by helping you plan and shop for meals ahead of time. It’s the first tool we’ve found that carries you through the entire meal planning process, including recipes, shopping and budgeting.

It begins with recipe recommendations based on your favorite cuisines and recent cravings; we’ll be serving the Pork Tenderloin with Kalamata Olives and Rosemary on Sunday if you’re not busy.

After you’ve picked your meals and input your favorite local grocery stores, FOTT prepares a convenient shopping list with all of the ingredients you’ll need. Plus, budgeting is easy-breezy: FOTT  scans circulars to let you know what’s on sale and calculates how much you’ll save.

We also installed the mobile app to plan meals wherever the mood strikes (and to avoid our raccoon-infested living room).

Pre-planned meals mean no more last-minute pizza deliveries or college dorm-style food concoctions. Unfortunately, this also means that pizza for breakfast is a thing of the past.

According to “the Internet,” a Grommet is a smart, undiscovered product from a new generation of socially responsible manufacturers.

We were still confused, so we took a tour through Daily Grommet’s offerings. Whatever you want to call it, they’re selling some of the coolest and most interesting gifts and products we’ve seen in awhile.

Every product has a backstory, with information about the manufacturer, materials, and more. It’s the personalized shopping experience that the Internet provides — and that the megastores make impossible.

We especially love the thoughtful and interesting green items for the home and garden, like reusable produce bags and eco-friendly sponges. And their gift suggestions, like tiny terrariums and wine kits, are awfully clever.

So we think we have it figured out: grommets are unique, awesome things you can buy on Internet. Or kids who are really into extreme icetubing.

After the government began placing heavy taxes on our beloved MaxxThrottle Amped LokoBull Energy Mega-Beverage, the Netted team has been hard pressed to find a new drink to keep us going through the day. We’ve decided to make the switch to tea and coffee, and we’ve found some great resources for our newfound obsessions.

Steepster is the ultimate social network for tea lovers, perfect for discovering and discussing everything from Earl Gray to Golden Monkey Paw. Members rate teas and pass along recommendations on how to make a perfect pot for each.

Many of the teas being discussed are linked to sites where you can purchase them to try for yourself. If your love for tea runs deep, you can keep a tea journal or search for nearby tearooms.

Brewmethods will make coffee fanatics weep with joy. Need a cold brewed iced coffee recipe? Want to order specialty coffee or replace that French press? They cover everything, and even include great how-to videos.

You’re now well on your way to partying like its 1773… in Boston. Remember, pinkies out!

We’ve spent the last few days falling in love with Foodily, a beautifully designed and deeply intuitive recipe search engine.

Of course, there are recipes for everything from pound cake to Pad Thai pulled from top chefs and recipe sites. What’s special here is that every ingredient is known, making it possible to avoid anything specific.

Foodily makes it dead easy to find what you want (or what you never knew you wanted). Even typing in “sriracha” yielded some amazing new uses for our favorite hot sauce.

To put it bluntly, this is a game changer for us. We would come up with something witty to sign off with, but we’re way too busy drooling over this raspberry trifle we’re going to make tonight.

Since we already bring you better living through the Internet daily, we figured it would be nice to bring you better loving through the Internet with our very special Netted Guide to Valentine’s Day.

If you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day this year with someone you love, think of it as the perfect opportunity to be truly original and surprise that special someone with a unique gift or memorable experience. It’s totally fine if you want to keep things traditional, but if not, we’re here to help with some fresh material.

We think it serves as a perfect backup plan now that your fireworks and personal chef budget has dried up.

To add a visual how-to element to your culinary experiments, try Cookblast, a search engine for recipe videos and cooking guides.

If Julia Child had had access to YouTube, her site may have looked something like this. Simply search for a specific recipe or browse the archives for inspiration.

Videos are organized by dish, ingredient and cuisine, allowing you to refine your search.

They also feature tips and tricks (you can search by technique), allowing you to perfect your craft to an even greater degree.

We’re also fond of the cocktail section, though we don’t recommend drinking your dinner with the frequency that we do.

For an alternative try Slant Shack Jerky, fine purveyors of artisanal, customized beef jerky.

First you select a size—they offer ¼ pound ($10), ½ pound ($18) and 1 pound party packages ($35).  Next you select from USDA choice or organic grass-fed beef, both of which come from a farm in Vermont (grass-fed costs a bit more).

But the real fun is in choosing from their marinades, rubs and glazes (these include
“Hot & Smoky” sauce, garlic powder rub, “Jerk McGurk’s Wild Rubdown,” “Smoky Sanche’s Dusty Trail,” and a brown sugar or spicy pepper glaze.)

The indecisive can choose from the Chef’s Choice menu, which features an array of variety packs.

Delivery takes about two weeks (each order is handcrafted), which is just about the time your Turkey leftovers will run out.

Special For Netted Readers
Enter the coupon code WEBBYJERKY at checkout to save 15% on your order. Offer vaild until 12/6.

In the days of yore, cooking was a social endeavor and the hearth was the center of the home.

Applying that logic to the online world is BakeSpace, a grassroots social network for people who love cooking, baking and hanging out in the kitchen.

While the site allows anyone to browse recipes, creating an account allows you to get the most out of the site by building a “virtual kitchen.” You can find and add foodie friends and store their recipes in your “recipe box,” or add and share your own dishes.

From there, you can use BakeSpace to socialize however you’d like: uploading cooking videos, creating blog posts or raiding the “virtual pantry” (an online discussion).

If you’re looking to expand your culinary horizons, you can take advantage of the site’s new mentor program. Want to try your hand at Indian food? Canning? Bread making? Your mentor can help get you started.

Apparently there can never be too many cooks in the kitchen.

To help cast a wider net, there’s Yummly, a website that uses your tastes and diet requirements to make personalized recipe recommendations.

Begin by setting up an account (or signing in with Facebook) and input some basic information about your food preferences. In addition to this, Yummly uses recipes, ingredients, cuisines, and ratings to determine your personal tastes and to recommend recipes.

Each recipe is scored based on its ingredients, which allows you to search for (or avoid) recipes based on ingredients, allergies, diet restrictions, or price.

Yummly also allows you to edit recipes and save them as your own, get recommendations for ingredient substitutions, see popular variations on dishes and add photos.

At least you can still use your copy of The Joy of Cooking as a cutting board.

We’ve all been there: it’s 3 p.m. and you suddenly realize you need lunch. But do you really want to search around for places, only to discover the best ones don’t deliver?

Thankfully, there’s the new SeamlessWeb mobile app, which allows you to have food delivered to you with more ease than ever before (in 17 U.S. cities and, soon, the U.K).

Just download the app for your iPhone or Blackberry (an Android version is on the way) and create a SeamlessWeb account, if you haven’t done so already via their decidedly less refined-looking site.

It’ll use your current location to compile a list of nearby restaurants that can deliver to you.

If you have an exact dish in mind, you can search for a specific restaurant. If you’re looking to try something new, you can browse by type of cuisine or food. When you order, you can even opt to pay by credit card.

As always, SeamlessWeb incorporates reviews from other customers so you can get a sense of the reputation of the place whose food you may be eating.

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t provide condiments.

Part of the joy of food is sharing your favorite meals with friends. But when it comes time to remember what foods friends have recommended, it can get difficult.

Thankfully, there’s Foodspotting, a social network site that allows you to make recommendations by snapping pictures of dishes from restaurants that you love and search for dishes in your area that you’d like to try.

Just set up a free account and begin searching the posted dishes in your zip code. You can “want” dishes you’d like to try, “nom” dishes that you’ve had and loved, or add a dish that you’ve had and isn’t on the site yet (just be sure to snap a picture).

The site is handy for seeing recent photos of those meals you’ve been meaning to try. You can follow restaurants (or like-minded Foodspotters) to stay on top of the latest sightings, and plan your dining expeditions accordingly.

Downloading the new Foodspotting iPhone app (just released) makes sharing and finding meals even easier. It incorporates all social aspects of the site and allows you to visualize great meals on the go.

Just make sure your appetite matches all that your eyes will now see.

For disorganized chefs, there’s Plummelo, a website that allows you to easily store recipes, plan when you’ll prepare them and, best of all, automatically create a shopping list for all the ingredients.

Sign up for a free account and install the Plummelo browser button. When you find a recipe you’d like to save, click the button to store it (most sites are supported, including Epicurious, AllRecipes and FoodNetwork.com).

Once you’re ready to start cooking, just drag and drop recipes onto the scheduling calendar (it’s perfect when planning ahead for dinner parties and holiday meals).

Plummelo creates a grocery list for you and even groups items together, making your grocery experience more efficient.

There is now one less excuse for you to have your extended family over for dinner.

Dining out is great.  But in the age of dwindling expense accounts, it’s a pricey undertaking.

To soften the blow, try BlackboardEats, a new service that offers exclusive deals on restaurants and artisanal culinary products handpicked by seasoned food editors.

To start, subscribe to the BlackboardEats e-mail (it’s delivered the same way Netted is).  Each email will contain a single delicious deal (30% off your meal or free appetizers, for example) at some of your city’s best restaurants.

Each email will contain a numeric passcode that you’ll use to get the deal (mention the number to the host when you arrive) that expires after 24 hours.

Rather than sending a dozen mediocre deals, the site only sends one offer per day, to ensure quality.  And while the service features new hot spots they also focus on hidden gems and great no-frills joints.

They currently covers Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco (with more locales in the works). For those who don’t live in one of those cities there’s a section called “everywhere,” which offers deals on culinary products that can shipped to you.

Consider your diet plans foiled.

Cooking a complicated foreign meal at home is a great idea.  In theory.

To put your global culinary skills into practice, try Destination Dinners, a service that provides recipe kits for authentic signature dishes from around the world.

The site offers dozen of recipe kits, organized by country of origin. Whether you’re in the mood for Chicken Garam Masala from Bangladesh or Lebanese baked spiced lamb, there’s a kit for you.

The recipe kits take the guessing out of the equation, and each comes with instructions, premeasured portions of every dry ingredient you’ll need (spices and the like) and a grocery list for the perishable parts of the meal you’ll need to buy.

The kits start at $25 and are designed to feed four adults. If you’re looking for something a little more elaborate, they also offers “Dinner Party” sets, which include extras like specialized utensils and accessories in addition to a recipe kit.

Get ready to retire that old stack of food delivery menus.

Or, it used to be, before the advent of SproutRobot!, which tells you exactly what seeds to plant based on your location, and then sends you the packets when it’s time to plant them.

Just sign up (for free) and then enter your zip code.  A few seconds later the site will create your planting calendar (hand-checked by gardening experts), telling what seeds to buy, and when to plant them, based on climate and seasonality.

When it’s time to plant something new you’ll received your certified organic heirloom seeds and instructions.

SproutRobot! offers three plans—patio garden ($19.99 per year), small garden (up to 6 seed varieties for $39.99 per year) and family garden ($59.99 per year.

You can’t get any more local or green than eating from your own garden.

Enter Chocomize, a new service that lets you create customized chocolate bars, tailored to your every whim.

Just visit the site and start building your chocolate bar. After choosing between your base chocolate (white, milk, or dark, all Belgian), Chocomize lets you add up to five extra ingredients.

And this is where it gets interesting, given that their list of extras includes everything from pine nuts to Pop Rocks.  Those with a taste for adventures can even add cayenne paper or hot curry powder.

Chocolate bars cost $3.95 apiece, with extras starting at $0.65 for each addition.

If customizing your own bar isn’t your thing, they feature a host of popular combinations to choose from. Chocomize even features a selection of bars for special occasions, from Father’s Day to birthdays.

(Once you’ve placed an order, your bars should arrive within 4-6 days.)

And, five out five dentists recommend Chocomize, which is nice.

American Au Naturel: Since there’s a very good chance that you’ll be spending a lot of time outdoors this weekend, we recommend Abe’s Market, an online marketplace for natural products from independent sellers around the country. Each seller has a profile that outlines their business practices and the products they sell, from coffee to cleaning products. Consider your barbeque sauce and bug spray needs covered.

Hitting the Beach: If you’re spending your weekend near a body of water, avoid the embarrassment of wearing the same bathing suit as your friend with Shortomatic, a service that allows you to make your own custom board shorts (cost: $99). You can upload your own photos and artwork or choose from a gallery of submitted one-off shorts.

Modern Pyrotechnics: If you’re stuck inside this weekend for some reason, or if your local weather isn’t cooperating, you can still enjoy the quintessential 4th of July experience with some Virtual Fireworks. A tad cheesy? Sure. But so is the real thing, often. And, at least Roman candles are finally safe for work.

We’ll be back next week with more non-nationalistic ways to make your life easier through the Internet.

Happy Fourth of July,

The Netted Team

Whatever your predilection, snacks are likely an essential part of your diet.  In honor of that (and all tokers past and present), we present Taquitos.net, the greatest independent snack review site in the history of mankind.

It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but the information is solid, covering every snack category from nuts to chocolate to pretzels.  There’s even reviews of airline and Passover snacks.

But the site’s sweet (or salty) spot are chips, be they potato, tortilla, barbecue, ripple, hot, wasabi, apple or otherwise.

The reviews are straightforward enough, exploring mainly taste and aroma (though they also tell you where you can buy the snacks).

What’s most impressive is the breadth of coverage. To date they have reviews for nearly 4,500 snacks, many of which we didn’t know existed (like Brim’s Pizza Balls and Tako’s octopus flavored chips).

And for those concerned about the expertise of the reviewers, the site claims everything is tasted by a Certified Snack Food Evaluator.

No word on whether they’re taking applications for new employees.

For some much needed assistance, try CellarThief, an online wine retailer that offers tips, recommendations and bargain-priced bottles.

Each day, CellarThief features three hand-picked wines and sells them at well below retail price for twenty-four hours. In addition to featuring standard tasting notes, they provide a plain English translation detailing why they’re crazy about a particular bottle.

If food pairings are your thing, CellarThief has detailed suggestions for what to eat with that light Sauvignon Blanc (pasta, chicken or fruit). Personally, we’re using the site to stock up for Passover.

CellarThief also has a clean water distribution program. For every bottle sold, they donate 100 days worth of water to needy people. They also work with wineries and suppliers who supplement these donations. When you purchase a bottle, you see how much water your bottle will provide.

Choosing wine has never been simpler, or more charitable.

And while we often aspire to consume the healthiest items available, we can’t always find them (that’s our excuse, anyway).

Enter Eat Well Guide, which helps you locate the best purveyors of local, organic and sustainably produced foods across the U.S. and Canada.

Their massive database covers everything from farmer’s markets to restaurants to specialty shops and even includes wholesalers and caterers.

You can search by location, keyword or category to find the food you want.  They also offer customized guides (there’s one for cities, one for seasons, etc.) and an innovative trip planning and mapping tool, which they call Eat Well Everywhere.

When you click on a specific purveyor you’re taken to a page that details their offerings along with a map and various logistical information.  From there you take your non-plastic bag and stock up on healthy, delicious items.

So put down that Gordita Supreme and go find yourself some organic kale.

Look no further than Nutrition Data, a one-stop source for all your nutritional analysis and food management needs.

The well-designed site offers a vast array of tools that help you understand what foods you need to eat (and which you should avoid).

One that we like is the Daily Needs Calculator, which determines the number of calories you burn, your body mass index (BMI) and the recommended daily amounts of various nutrients you need, based on your age, weight and exercise regimen.

There are tools that allow you to track the foods you consume over time, analyze recipes and rank popular food brands in terms of calories, carbs and fat content.

You can also get the lowdown on items from a variety of fast food chains, from Arby’s to White Castle.

The information provided about specific foods and brands is very thorough and includes graphical representations of the nutrition (or lack thereof).

Spoiler alert: corn dogs have not suddenly become healthy.

Finally, the answers have been revealed, thanks to a playful and stylish new site called Eggwatchers.

As you move through the process you’re asked to describe your egg (is it small or large?  Is it just out of the fridge?) and, of course, how you want it to end up (given that the site’s creators are British they offer “squidgy” or “firm”).

It’ll then provide with you with an answer (in minutes) and a very inventive egg timer: When you click the timer it randomly selects a YouTube video that matches the exact length of time your egg will need to boil.

(During our tests we were treated to a montage from The Simpsons, a clip from a Japanese game show and a guy playing the drums really, really well).

Our hope is that the folks behind the site do timers for all types of foods (but then, we tend to get bored easily when we cook).

This, however, doesn’t mean you should throw caution completely to the wind. To help moderate your alcohol-based adventures we recommend DrinkLogger.

This straightforward site (with a version optimized for mobile devices) is devoted to one thing:  telling you just how drunk you are, based on your weight, gender, the number of drinks you’ve imbibed in a set period of time and the type of drink it was (beer, wine or spirits).

When you visit the site for the first time you’ll sign up and it will record your height and gender data.  For all future readings you simply plug in the drinking data.

When you do, it instantly plots a nifty little graph, with your estimated blood alcohol content (BAC) on the y-axis and time shown on the x-axis. (Thus, you have a current reading of your BAC.)

More importantly it graphs “future time,” which gives an indication of how much time you’ll need to sober up (this comes in handy when operating devices that allow you to text your exes).

The site cautions that the BAC levels it provides are only estimates.

Still, it’s a helpful tool in certain situations.

Thankfully there’s WineChap, a new service that provides real-time reviews of (and recommendations from) the wine lists of top restaurants.

While most wine-centric services focus on abstract tasting notes (who really knows the difference between persimmon and pear?), WineChap takes a more practical approach, organizing wine lists into categories that mirror the ways people buy wine:  value, by the glass, first date, treat yourself, etc.

For old-fashioned types, they also provide thorough written reviews of every establishment they cover, and they update often, given the frequency with which restaurants change their offerings.

Currently, you can access nearly 250 reviewed lists from restaurants in New York, Hong Kong and the UK (though this list is growing quickly). The site is free, and they also offer an iPhone app for $4.99.

Serious wine geeks can pay to become a Premier Crew Member, which boasts a number of high end benefits, including a personal wine consultant (who will book your reservations and call ahead to set your wine aside) and tips on building the perfect wine cellar.

When you’re ready to graduate from Bartles & Jaymes to Grand Cru, WineChap will be your guide.

Enter Foodzie, the one stop online shop for all your locally sourced artisanal grocery needs. They offer everything from BBQ Pulled Pork (from Phoenix) to Zesty Peach Marmalade (made in Erwin, NC).

Unlike other web-based grocery services, Foodzie doesn’t hawk mass-market consumer goods. Rather, it provides access to small-scale gourmet producers and growers across the country, shipping goods directly from producers rather than some large-scale grocer’s freezer.

At present, Foodzie features products from 228 producers across the country. Each producer profile includes a “story,” giving buyers a sense of who they are and how much passion they put into their wares.

Have a favorite producer you don’t see on the site? Suggest it. (The Foodzie folks encourage user feedback).

The next time you find yourself in the frozen foods section at the grocery store, just remember that there’s a better way.

So in the spirit of responsible drinking we offer Extra Tasty, a handy little booze site that features thousands of interesting, unique and mostly great user-generated drink recipes (plus all the classics), all of which are rated and commented on by other users.

Volume is one thing, but what makes the site so useful is the design sensibility, which is both playful and utilitarian.

You can find recipes by ingredient tags (listed on a side panel) or you can search by drink names, booze variety and even particular brands.

One of the best features is “My Bar.”  Just plug in whatever ingredients you have access to (alcohol, mixers and garnishes) and it’ll give you all the various concoctions you can create without leaving the comfort of your home lounge.

For New Year’s revelers there are nearly 100 recipes that involve champagne—enough to keep you busy well into 2010.

Happy New Year

The Netted Team

A new food site called Foodista is trying to turn that idea on its head by creating a culinary Wikipedia that covers recipes, cooking techniques, utensils and general food information.

Sure, there are hundreds of recipe sites already in existence. But many of them are static collections.  Foodista’s goal is to bake a better babka by tapping the wisdom of the crowd, creating a living recipe book (though their site design could use a little help).

Instead of offering 300 random versions of a recipe they offer just a few that’ve been edited and which are, in theory, improved as a result.

Better yet, if you think your grandmother’s technique or ingredient is superior you can add it to offering.

While recipes are a large part of the experience we found the tools and techniques sections to be just as helpful, and interesting.

(Tired of watching Top Chef and not understanding the art of sous-vide cooking? Try Foodista).

If you’re planning to do some cooking (or some eating) during the upcoming holidays, Foodista can help.  And, If nothing else, browsing it may give you a brief respite from your relatives.

Zeer.com provides nutritional information on over 110,000 products found in your grocery store aisles, including FDA labels, reviews from other members and definitions of certain “problem” ingredients.  (Ever wondered what “maltodextrin” was?  Now you can find out.)

You can search by product name, brand, product category or specific criteria (like “gluten-free”).

When you find products you like the site lets you save them so you can create an informed, healthy grocery list.

Zeer is especially useful for people with dietary restrictions since it flags ingredients based on certain food allergies and offers alternatives.

There’s also a community section where users can chat with others who have similar interests and needs.

Access the site via your mobile browser or their new iPhone app and have all of this contextual information where you need it most—when you’re at the market, trying to decide which breakfast cereal to buy.

Specifically, we’re presenting a step-by-step Howcast video that shows you how to properly undertake this difficult, age-old art form.

In other words we’re giving you a chance to impress your family, friends and loved ones.

What you’ll need: A turkey (preferably one that’s been cooked), a sharp knife, a cutting board and a serving tray.

Obviously, carving a turkey is an offline, analog activity.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the Internet to perfect your craft.

And if you’re looking to, uh, bone up a bit more, there’s also this bonus video of Martha Stewart trying to teach Andy Samberg how to carve a turkey.

And, yes, he’s wearing an ironic holiday sweater.

For these mealtime needs try SeamlessWeb, an online delivery service that gives you web access to all your favorite neighborhood restaurants, and many you probably weren’t aware would deliver to you.

The service, currently available in 15 cities (including New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles), makes ordering and paying for food a one-click transaction.

Okay, maybe it’s more like three, but you get the point:  It’s simple, convenient and as close to magical as anything we use on a daily basis.

When you enter your address the system pulls up the hundreds of restaurants that deliver in your area.  Choose the one you want and you’re taken to their menu (many of which aren’t otherwise online). Click on the items you want, confirm your order, add your tip, and you’re done.

You get a confirm email and, a half hour or so later, your actual meal.

Use it next time you want to order from that great place that doesn’t have a website, or whenever you simply don’t feel like dealing with other people in order to feed yourself.

In lieu of scores of different ways to deep fry turducken, Cookstr offers a curated list of recipes provided by a roster of 250 star chefs and cookbook authors (including Alice Waters, Mario Batali, Daniel Boulud, Julia Child and Jamie Oliver, among others).

The site also boasts a superfast search functionality and a streamlined Web 2.0 interface.  As a result finding inventive (but tried and true) recipes from people who cook really, really well for a living is easy and quick.

We’re planning to improve our familial relationships with at least two dishes found on the site: Nigela Lawson’s maple-roast parsnips and David Burke’s pumpkin brulee.

Not that there’s anything wrong with deep-fried turducken, should you go that route…