My favorite food bloggers (etc.) of 2009

Today is Andrew and Elijah's second day of school since the Winter holiday, and I am enjoying the gentle rhythms of toddler play.



It's amazing how much less manic my day is with only two little ones to enjoy.

Soooo.... I thought that I was done with my 2009 wrap-up, but as both Julie from the comments on my other blog, and Heather pointed out here, I forgot to add food links to yesterday's Best Of. Which, of course, is because I wanted to devote an entire post to food related ones. Yes, that was my plan all along. Right. (Actually, reading over this post, you'll see that it's a good thing I waited -- there's a heck of a lot of great foodbloggers and sites out there!)

Alright now, let's get to it! Starting with the blogs...

Blogs I've cooked/baked from (or gleaned ideas from) the most in the past year:

• 101 Cookbooks (Healthy and delicious food. LOVE how she makes lentils and beans into imaginative dishes. Heidi Swanson wrote the cookbook: Super Natural Cooking )
• Baking Bites (So many reviews and baking recipes on this blog!)
• Culinary in the Desert (Accessible recipes for the home cook -- I look to this blog for dinner inspiration often)
• Dorie Greenspan: In the kitchen and on the road with Dorie (Author of my favorite Baking book. Need I say more?)
• Everybody Likes Sandwiches (Delicious recipes + crafty goodness. Hard to beat that.)
• Food Blogga (She's just added a video feature with tips to her blog, which I love!) (Also, now that I've watched her How To Seed a Pomegranate video, I feel stupid for ever trying to seed one any other way. Please tell me I'm not the only one who didn't know how to do this!)
• Joy the Baker (I'm only upset that I didn't find this blog sooner! Her recipes are dead on, photography engaging, and her blog is well organized. Love it.)
• Orangette (Molly Wizenberg has a way with words. I will literally cook or bake anything simply because she's described it. She is also has a regular column in Bon Appetit, and wrote the cookbook: A Homemade Life.)
• Smitten Kitchen (Dudes. There's nothing I DON'T love about this New York City cook.)
• The Nourishing Gourmet (Currently running a Healthy $1 Menu Series on her blog)
• The Pioneer Woman Cooks (Ree Drummond wrote the book The Pioneer Woman Cooks; my copy is signed by her because I'm a silly fangirl. Also, today she has just posted a recipe for Duce De Leche Coffee. RUN DO NOT WALK.)

Eye candy:

• Bakerella (Insanely adorable, artistic setups and photographs.)
• Bittersweet (Vegan recipes, a little bit of crochet thrown in and fabulous photos.)
• foodbeam (Recipes and beautiful photography.)
• she paints the kitchen red (Cupcakes and cakes.)
• Tartlette (I am literally blown away by her artistic hand with food, and the way she uses her camera to amp it all up.)

A good read:

• David Lebovitz (Live vicariously through this American expat pastry chef located in Paris.)
• Cupcake Bakeshop (Not only fantastic cupcakes, but also insight as to how she builds her recipes, which I've found to be indispensable.)
• Delicious Days (Nicole Stich is also the author of a cookbook by the same name: delicious days)
• Roots and Grubs (Matthew Amster-Burton wrote Hungry Monkey, which I keep forgetting to buy...)
• Stickyrice (Restaurant reviews, food-related travel.)
• Technicolor Kitchen: English version (Patricia Scarpin writes from her home in Portugal, and I love the reading about the local produce, etc.)
• Vanilla Garlic (Garrett has a way of mixing food stories and humor in a way that I find most entertaining. Hands down, my favorite of his stories: Preggers and The Peon.)

Standalone:

• Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: finding the forgotten feast (In my eyes, this guy is a culinary hero.)

Sites full of trusted recipes that make figuring out what's for dinner SO much more enjoyable:

• Bon Appetit
• Gourmet
• Epicurious
• Saveur

Food forums:

• Bakespace
• Tasty Kitchen
• Tastespotting (OK, so this isn't actually a forum, but it is community driven, so it fits best here)
• The Fresh Loaf

I know that I'm missing at least one other main food forum, but I can't remember what it is at the moment.

Do you have a favorite food blogger or food related site that I should know about? Let me know in the comments!