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A IS FOR ADVERTISEMENTS

The products they tout may have been off the shelves for decades, but vintage ads and TV commercials live on online. Ads designed in the mid- to late-nineteenth century to promote the “healthful” effects of new products gave way to those aimed at convincing housewives to save time by purchasing “instant” and “processed” foods; by the middle of the last century, familiar faces such as Tony the Tiger and Ronald McDonald appealed directly to children, and now, advertising directed at kids is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Text By LOUISE MCCREADY

Photographs by Antiques & Collectables/Alamy (Left); Swim Ink 2/Corbis (Right)

bacon

B IS FOR BACON

Depending on where you stand, bacon is either shorthand for everything that’s wrong with food online or a smoky uniter, the gateway meat for vegetarians and the one ingredient that makes everything else better. In a recent article for Details, Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal summed it up by saying, “Good old bacon—so Web 2.0.” Exactly. Because despite repeated attempts by some members of the food media to freeze bacon’s Blob-like progress across the Internet, the stuff refuses to go away. As much as we love it, we can’t help adding our voice to the bored-of-bacon choir. If you’re looking for a new fixation beyond the ubiquitous bacon cupcake, why not try, oh, I don’t know… Duck-Fat Doughnuts?

Text By Adam Houghtaling

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

chef groupies

C IS FOR CHEF GROUPIES

When chefs became celebrities, it was only a matter of time before they got their own groupies, and now the mania has spread to include other purveyors and artisans: The Web is filled with food-crazy fan pages devoted to everyone from rugged young chocolatiers to, um, rugged young butchers. Acts of fandom range from the casual (such as Top Chef stalking) to the disturbingly committed (tattoos).

Text By Jessica Glavin

Photograph by Digital Vision/Getty

F IS FOR FLAME WARS

Text by Lindsay Maas

Photograph by John Foxx/Getty

G IS FOR GROSS FOOD

A bacon sandwich the size of a small child (and bearing a striking resemblance to Cousin Itt) is staring down at you from SuperSizedMeals.com. Torn between a simultaneous urge to wince and stare, you are experiencing a common reaction to the Gross-Food Movement. Over the past year, gross-food sites like This is Why You’re Fat have exploded in popularity—giving birth to everything from book deals to Spamsicles, and proving that even as we take steps as a nation to collectively eat healthier, we still find ourselves inexplicably bewitched by images of Bacon Chip Nachos.

Text By Jessica Glavin

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

H IS FOR HEALTH-CODE INSPECTIONS

There once was a time when cleanliness-conscious diners had to call or write their local health departments to get the dirt on nearby restaurants, but now cities and counties nationwide—from New York City to Colorado’s rural Mesa County to the City of Angels—post extensive Department of Health information online. Coverage on blogs, such as Eater’s “DOH Chronicles,” also paints a sometimes-frightening picture. Perhaps restaurants failing inspections should make Dr. Carl Winter’s Food Safety Music the mandatory back-of-house soundtrack?

Text By Louise McCready

Photograph by Will Femia

J IS FOR JUNK FOOD

Text by Lindsay Maas

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

luis

L IS FOR LUIS

The child host of Cooking for Kids with Luis hails from Down Under via Guatemala, and his unbelievably cute accent—roughly two parts Aussie, one part kid-speak—adds a lot to his already huge charm. Part of the show’s mission is to allow children to “take ownership of the cooking process and develop confidence in their own abilities,” but Luis’s joyful online videos have been known to have the same effect on grown-ups. He’s just one of the Web’s growing number of young cooks and foodies; others can be found on sites like Spatulatta and Young Gourmet. And that’s not to mention the legion of great blogs by parents—like The Toddler Café, Foodie Tots, and One Little Bite—about cooking with kids.

Text By Christy Harrison

Photograph by Noggin

nostalgia

N IS FOR NOSTALGIA

Some of the foods you loved in childhood may make you wince now that you know what the words “partially hydrogenated” mean. Other favorites may have been homemade, but the recipes are long gone. Today there’s plenty of bandwidth devoted to recreating these nostalgic dishes (often without the unhealthy oils or other ultra-processed ingredients). Of course, the comfort foods you crave depend a lot on your background, but we’re pretty sure that one bite of our macaroni and cheese, devil dog cake, tuna noodle casserole, or double-chocolate sandwich cookies will make you feel like a kid again.

Text By Louise McCready

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

patent search

P IS FOR PATENT SEARCH

This holiday season, forgo the usual kitchen gadgets and get that special food lover in your life something truly unique, like a dripless grease extractor, a compact pizza preparation and delivery vehicle, or a battery charger amusement device. There are thousands of often odd, sometimes brilliant ideas and inventions for your kitchen floating out there in cyberspace, on patent-search sites like Google Patents and esp@cenet. Okay, so not all of these inventions have actually made it to market, but with a little DIY spirit, you could change that.

Text By Chris Dudley

Photograph Courtesy of Patently Silly by Daniel Wright/The Lyons Press

questing

Q IS FOR QUESTING

Julie & Julia offers the most recent example of an online culinary quest (in writer Julie Powell’s case, it’s the attempt to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year), but there are at least two dozen other bloggers devoted to “cooking the books,” including several who are making their way through the Gourmet cookbook. Food questing also includes bloggers attempting to recreate recipes from their favorite restaurants and bakeries (City Bakery’s beloved chocolate chip cookies are a popular choice). And of course there are physical food quests, embodied by the likes of the Roadfood community, where a recent search for the best ice cream in New England is just the tip of the iceberg.

Text By Christy Harrison

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

rube goldberg

R IS FOR RUBE GOLDBERG

Who says that those absurdly engineered, incredibly inefficient apparatuses known as Rube Goldberg machines are only good for bursting balloons? Absurdist-leaning foodies inspired by the mind-bending drawings of the 20th-century illustrator have developed complicated contraptions used for everything from making cocktails and brewing tea to flipping hamburgers. And they say ingenuity is dead…

Text By Chris Dudley

Photograph by Rube Goldberg™ & © of Rube Goldberg, Inc.

scanwiches

S IS FOR SCANWICHES

This surprisingly riveting site puts a twist on a favorite office pastime with its beautiful scans of sandwiches. Turns out it wasn’t the first scanned-sandwich site—that title belongs to the very similarly named Scanwich, which was launched in 2007—but we have to say we’re a little disturbed by the extreme close-ups used in the original. Of course, there are endless online examples of food being turned into an artistic medium, including this rather CGI-looking Jell-O model of the San Francisco skyline.

Text By Jessica Glavin

Photograph Courtesy of scanwiches.com

twitter

T IS FOR TWITTER

In 140 or fewer characters, Twitter’s restaurant reviews, “twecipes,” and taco-truck locations provide a constant stream of food chatter.

Text by Lindsay Maas

unmentionable cuisine

U IS FOR UNMENTIONABLE CUISINE

In his 1979 book, Unmentionable Cuisine, Calvin W. Schwabe introduced readers to bizarre foods he’d encountered in his extensive travels. This collection of recipes (some of which now seem quite tame) helped pave the way for the extreme-eating feats of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern. The Web is full of other descendents of Schwabe’s legacy, including blogs about insect eating, weird meat, and much more.

Text By Christy Harrison

Photograph by Catherine Karnow

veggie trader

V IS FOR VEGGIETRADER

Like a cross between Craigslist and Freecycle, VeggieTrader is an online classifieds service that allows home gardeners to trade or sell their surplus vegetables and plants. With 6,000 members just four months after its launch, VeggieTrader is set to succeed, as more Americans want to know where and how their food is grown.

Text by Louise McCready

Photograph by Stephanie Foley

Y IS FOR YOUTUBE

This site has propelled countless amateur directors, actors, and animators to mini-stardom, and amateur cooking-show hosts are no exception (just ask 94-year-old Clara of Great Depression Cooking). Quick recipe demonstrations are as helpful as they are entertaining, but we love YouTube most for giving us access to the classics—including The French Chef, The Frugal Gourmet, and, yes, the Swedish Chef.

Text By Lindsay Maas

Z IS FOR ZEN EATING

Many blogs and health websites have embraced the Buddhist idea of mindful eating, which entails truly enjoying your food without distraction, keeping it simple, and knowing when you’re full (or when you’re eating for reasons other than hunger). But reading about mindfulness online can lead to some ironically mindless behaviors: As a commenter on a recent Glamour blog post put it, “I want to try to be a zen eater (I am literally inhaling a peanut-butter sandwich while typing this).”

Text By Christy Harrison

Photograph by Marco Bulgarelli/Corbis

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