This page is devoted to what we all love, food. How to save money at restaurants and grocery stores, where to learn about fine wines, and how to cook a truly gourmet meal.

Food

Food has become possible the favorite subject in American, and dining-out seems to have become the great American pastime. We loving eating food, reading about it, shopping for it, and some people love cooking food (don't look at me, I'm happy just eating it). There are millions of Internet sources of information, I have sprinkled in a few links here and there, just to give you some ideas of where to look.

Parade - Eat Your Way Across America - Food Festivals

Biscoff.com - Cookies /Specials

Food Tips

Yahoo! Shine - Ending the Great Condiment Debate - A list of storage and shelf life tips for your favorite dressings and spreads.

Restaurants

Saving Money At Restaurants. Dining out can get expensive, but you can save money with coupons, yes for restaurants. There are several way to save at your favorite restaurants especially via the Internet.

First, go to your favorite restaurants' web sites and sign up for their newsletter, or become a fan on Facebook, many restaurants will give you a coupon just for signing up. Then periodically these restaurants will e-mail you newsletters with nice freebie or discount coupons. As I am writing this one restaurant that I am signed up with just e-mailed me a coupon for free chips and queso, really. Then anytime you want to try a new restaurant, just check out their web site or Facebook page to see if they offer a coupon for signing up for their newsletter or for friending them on Facebook. Don't forget to check other sources such a Twitter, but the two mentioned seem to be the most popular ways restaurants are reaching out to customers. Don't want all of that e-mail coming into your personal e-mail account, simply create an e-mail account just for gathering information like restaurant newsletters. Also, you can get some coupons via your smart phone if you are connected to the Internet, so if you are deciding on the fly where to go and eat, check out restaurants using you phone.

Chili's Restaurant

Another way to save at restaurants is via all of the Daily Deals type coupon services like Groupon, Urban Dealight, CBS Local Offers, LivingSocial Deals, and MasterCard Market Place. You might want to have these e-mails going to a separate information type e-mail account that you create just for junk mail, as these companies tend to send e-mails just about daily, also some are just getting your info to sell to other companies and spam you, so do a little research before signing up. FYI: I personally have never used any of these sites. Here is an example of a coupon web site that gets bad reviews: Shopathome.com/Coupons/Reviews/couponcaboodle.com
For most anything on the web, just put the name and "reviews" into your browser bar and check them out before signing up or buying something. You certainly can't please all of the people all of the time, but the negatives should not outweigh the positives.

There are many review web sites here is one:
Sitejabber.com

MasterCard MarketPlace

Groupon:

Another source of discount restaurant coupons are web sites such as Restaurants.com

Here are some reviews.

http://golosangeles.about.com/od/discounts/gr/Restaurant-com.htm

Don't forget about your local newspaper. People are tending to give up their newspaper subscriptions, but if you use the newspaper's discount services, you might save more than the newspaper costs; I actually do, between grocery store coupons and the discount card. Newspapers offer incentives to get subscribers, like discount cards for a long term subscriptions, and some newspapers also have daily deals type e-mail newsletters.

DealSaver.com - Example of a newspaper associated deals page.

Buying pre-paid restaurant cards. There are places on the Internet that offer to sell discount restaurant pre-paid cards and there are exchange pre-paid card services. Be careful since you would be dealing with your hard earned money, make sure you are using a legitimate service by doing an Internet search of the company name to see what others are saying about the company.

People love to give and receive restaurant gift cards. Here is a review web site:
http://www.scripsmart.com/giftcards/565-restaurant-com-gift-card

Finding New And Interesting Restaurants. Your family and friends are, of course, a main source for discovering new restaurants, but with the Internet, you can easily find your own way in the world of food. A Google search for restaurants in your zip code area will turn up places you never heard of. Review sites like Yellow Pages: Superpages have information, reviews and even daily deal coupons.

Google Maps - Go to Google Maps and type in "restaurants" and your zip code.
Yahoo! Local - Restaurants and reviews.
Superpages - Restaurants and reviews.

And if you are looking for a real hot spot, check out the Food Channel's reviews, people like Guy Fieri have probably been to and televised a restaurant near you, maybe one that you don't even know about. Just put in the name of your city at the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives page and see what comes up.

Food Channel - Recipes and food programs on cable/satellite TV.

Save Money/Coupons

Saving Money At The Grocery Store. Saving money at the grocery store is similar to saving money at restaurants, you can find discount coupons at the brands' web sites and sign up for their newsletters. Additionally you can find coupons in your local newspaper and there are web sites on the Internet and newsletters like RedPlum and SmartSource which have manufacturer coupons.

Kikkoman - Coupons and recipes.
Extras! - Coupons and free samples.
RedPlum - Coupons.
SmartSource - Coupons.
VocalPoint - Coupons and free samples.

The trick to coupons is to only clip and carry coupons for items you either use all the time like pet food, or that you will need in the next 30-days like hand lotion that you are almost out of. If you clip everything that interests you, you will defeat yourself, you will get tired of clipping and tired of going through a hundred coupons looks for the few that you actually need. Just clip what you need and you won't get frustrated.

Food Trucks

The hot new craze for dining out are Food Trucks, and they are driving-up all over the country. What's all the fuss? Food Trucks have been around as long as there have been wheels to move them, what's new is that the "new generation" of Food Trucks tout gourmet foods and desserts along with the traditional walk-up and "grab a bit for lunch" service. But Food Trucks are not just for lunch anymore, they are also busy serving breakfast, dinner and late night snacks. The Food Network has even held a cooking challenge for Food Trucks - "The Great Food Truck Race".

The other thing that is unique about the new Food Trucks is their illusiveness, they pop-up around town in different locations at different times, they are often following "events" where a lot of people will be gathering. Food Trucks live and breathe by the social network sites, such a Twitter and Facebook. People follow the Food Trucks' Tweets and FB Posts to discover where their favorite Food Trucks are, and even follow the Food Trucks to the HOT events around town, 'cause Food Trucks need people and the owners keep themselves informed about what's going on around town, and they are intuitive about where the people will be. Some Food Trucks chefs are using these mobile restaurants as a spring board to starting their own brick and mortar restaurants. It's fun, it trendy, and it's tasty, what more could you ask.

Food Network - Great Food Truck Race

Yahoo! Travel - America's Most Creative Food Trucks
The Dallas Observer Blog - Over the Weekend: The Food Truck Smackdown
About.com - Gourmet Food Trucks in LA: This Ain't No Roach Coach
The Chattanoogan - Life With Ferris: The Food Truck Craze

Chef2Chef - Article includes a brief overview of "Starting a Food Truck Business"

Selfish Giving - What Nonprofits Can Learn from the Food Truck Craze

Wine & Spirits

One of the best ways to learn about wine is to drink it and there are wine stores, like WineStyles, that can be found locally and which have weekly wine tasting events. You can also find web sites online to buy and try wines.

Wine Styles: http://www.winestylesstore.com/

Gold Medal Wine Club:

Beer micro-breweries are the new trend, do an Internet search or check Google Maps and see if there is one near you. You can also find web sites online to buy and experience different beers. Very fun waiting for your next taste experience to arrive.

Craft Beer Club:

Cooking & Recipes

Cooking

For many people cooking is like a hobby, for others it is a future as a chef, and for most of us it is an everyday chore. But even for the everyday cook learning some techniques and tricks of the chefs can improve time and taste. The Food Network is an amazing eye-opener for anyone who likes to eat or cook. The Food Channel has shows on TV for finding great restaurants and shows for how to cook fancy to everyday foods. Also, at the Food Network web site they maintain a whole slew of shows, information, and videos. Along the right side of most pages are cooking instruction videos. The web site lists the days shows and recipes so you can easily print off any recipes you saw on a show. The tips and techniques that you can pick up watching some of the Food Network shows are seriously useful. You can also watch some episodes of the TV shows on the Food Network's web site.

Food Network - TV food shows.

If you have a serious interest in learning to cook like a chef, either for fun or career check out Rouxbe they have some of the finest instruction videos on the Internet.

Rouxbe Online Video Cooking School

Recipes

There are literally millions of recipes online, where to start? The Food Network, of course, is a great source for recipes and instruction, but what most people probably want to know is how to prepare a specific item, like how to make potato soup. The simple thing to do is put "potato soup recipe" into your browser and do a search. There are many web sites that will e-mail you recipes such as Yahoo! Shine. Not all recipe services will have recipes that are to your liking and some send out e-mails way to often. Do a search on recipes that you like and recipe newsletters and take a look at what they offer.

Yahoo! Shine - Food Recipes
Betty Crocker - Food Recipes
Betty Crocker Bisquick - Food Recipes
Vocal Point - Food Recipes
Relish - Monthly Newspaper Magazine Recipes Insert

My Tips

I do not get exited about cooking, it's a necessary chore, so I look for the basics and shortcuts. Here are some things that I have read and learned along the way.

Gravy - I turned my lumps into smooth gravy when my mother-in-law informed me that I should never add flour to a pan of hot liquid. Who knew? Yes, you can brown flour in a little grease, but before adding flour to a pan of hot liquid, just mix the flour with a cold liquid, like milk, and then slowly add the cold liquid/flour mixture to the hot liquid. I also use Wondra Flour so I start with a finer flour.

Microwave & Vegetables - I microwave most of my vegetables. Gourmet people, please don't read, you'll cry. I use the microwave to steam my veggies by putting them in a microwave save bowl with a vented cover and add in a small amount of water. I can mix my vegetables, like carrots, squash, green beans, and I just microwave them all together in a couple of three minutes, depending on the quantity, and then I let them sit and steam while I am cooking other meal items. Oh and potatoes, who can wait an hour for a baked potato, not me. I wash the potatoes, pierce them a few times for venting, then microwave them two to four minutes a side, depending on the quantity and size of the potato and behold, baked potatoes in just a few minutes. And when I want to make mashed potatoes, potato salad or make faster frying potatoes, I just cube the potatoes, cover them in water, in a microwave save dish, and microwave them for four to eight or ten minutes, depending on quantity, but beware - the water will boil out and all over your microwave unless you watch the dish and run the microwave in shorter times than the full time needed.

Fewer Dishes - I don't like washing dishes, so I always look for shortcuts. When I am making corn bread (don't be silly, not from scratch, not me) anyway, I spray the baking dish with oil (I use Olive Oil for almost everything, I may be lazy, but I try to eat health). With the baking dish greased, I add the liquid ie. milk and egg, then dump in the box of corn bread mix, and stir. One pan, no bowl to wash. Yea!