Monday, July 13, 2009

FamilyOven: Find the Perfect Dish for The Holidays

With Thanksgiving this week and the rest of the winter holidays quickly approaching, many of us will find ourselves at the dinner table with family and friends over the next couple months. You may have to cook or bake something to share, and fruitcake isn't going to cut it this year. FamilyOven can help. It's a Web service that connects cooks and people who love food with one another, and connect people who need a good recipe with tasty dinner ideas instantly. You can meet other foodies, watch cooking videos, and find recipes at FamilyOven easily.





Whenever my girlfriend and I visit my parents, we usually wind up at a loss for what to prepare to take with us. If you're looking for something new and interesting to make for a holiday meal, you can browse FamilyOven for cooking ideas. The site has recipes in dozens of categories, ranging from ethnic cuisine like Asian and Indian food to healthy options like vegetarian and vegan dishes, low-carb choices, and low-fat dishes. If all you know is that your in-laws love artichokes, you can search by ingredient to see all the recipes at FamilyOven that have artichokes in them, and start from there.



If instead you're in the mood to just poke around the site and look for something interesting, you can click "stumble around" and immediately see a random recipe from the site's database. From there you can see related recipes, view more recipes and videos that the user may have posted, or browse the recipes of other users. If that's not enough, you can get recipe ideas from the front page, or search the tag cloud to see what types of recipes everyone is posting. FamilyOven boasts thousands of recipes across nearly 50 categories.



Searching the site for interesting something to make is only half the fun. Accounts at FamilyOven are free, and once you're signed up, you can post your own recipes and cooking videos. Family Oven allows users to create custom home-pages that they see when they log in to the service. You can populate your home-page with your FamilyOven friends and the recipes they just uploaded, recipes that you've found elsewhere on the site, your favorite videos, and feeds from your favorite recipe categories. You can also customize your profile, so when other FamilyOven members view it they can browse your videos, your uploaded recipes and photos, and the people who have listed you as a friend on the site.

Speaking of videos, FamilyOven encourages its members to post videos of their cooking and share them with others. The service has a section dedicated to videos, and while you can't upload your video directly to the site, you can upload to sites such as Revver and YouTube and then share your videos at FamilyOven.

FamilyOven has all the trappings of a social network but is completely dedicated to food and food lovers. The service is a double-win: It's an amazing resource if you're looking for something new and interesting to make in the kitchen and also if you're looking for something different to bring to your holiday meals. At the same time, it's also a really sleek social network, connecting people who have a common interest that I can get behind.

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