The Web Is Cooking

You'll have no trouble finding your way around the Reluctant Gourmet -- even if you get lost in your own kitchen. The "From a to z" section is a comprehensive glossary of terms ("al dente," "saffron," and "Worcestershire sauce," for example), while the "Cooking Primer" has detailed explanations of basic techniques like roasting and braising. The site also has recipes for beginning cooks that come from other beginners. These can be found in the appropriately titled "Novice to Novice Recipes" section.

Messy Gourmet's main ingredient is fun. Besides recommending cooking tools that have been rated and tested by the site's food engineers, it also offers such handy tips as how to get stains out of Tupperware or how to get rid of odors on your hands (by washing them with toothpaste). Messy Gourmet shows you ways to have fun, make a mess, and clean up.

Tools of the Trade

Great recipes are just part of the, well, recipe for success in the kitchen. Any good cook will tell you that a dish is only as good as the ingredients that go into it. So before heading for the grocery store, visit Phil Lempert, the Supermarket Guru (www.supermarketguru.com). Lempert is food correspondent for NBC's Today show and a contributor to USA Weekend. His site serves up a cornucopia of tips, tricks, and strategies that save time and money. "Shopping 101" offers advice on choosing a grocery store, as well as the pros and cons of specialty-market versus superstore shopping. There's even a section on understanding labels that includes "Top 10 Misleading Labels" and "Deciphering the Clues to Freshness."

Whether you're a seasoned chef or a culinary newbie, there are a few sites that you'll want to check out. Fabulous Foods Online Cooking School (www.fabulousfoods.com/school/schoolf.html), for instance, offers information that runs the gamut from how to stock a basic pantry (or deluxe kitchen) to how to roast the perfect turkey. The Cook's Thesaurus (www.switcheroo.com) offers suggestions on substitutions for thousands of cooking ingredients, whether you've run out of an herb, need a low-cal, low-fat alternative, or just want to replace a hard-to-find spice.

Finally, if you need to know how to brighten those aluminum pans or are looking for a new way to prepare artichokes, you'll want to visit the "Epicurious Index" on Tips from Great Chefs (http://food.epicurious.com/e_eating/e02_secrets/index2.htm), which promises to provide 1,000 "tips and tricks from some of the world's best chefs."

Time for Takeout

The fast pace of work and life in the new economy has made it increasingly difficult for most of us to get home in time to make a meal. Which raises the question, What about using the Web for takeout?

Tim Glass, cofounder of Food.com (www.food.com), asked himself the same question a few years ago, as he watched Sandra Bullock's character in The Net order a pizza online. He created a site called CyberSlice, which soon became Cybermeals, and then Food.com -- now one of the biggest players in online takeout and delivery, with more than 12,000 partners (restaurants) and approximately 650,000 registered members.

To use Food.com, members log on, enter their street address, phone number, and email address. They then get a list of restaurants offering takeout or delivery to their neighborhood. To place an order, users click on the menu items they want and check off the details related to that item. You can specify how you want your cheeseburger cooked and the kind of cheese and condiments you want on it. The system keeps a running tab of items ordered, plus tax and delivery charges. After you submit the order, you get a confirming email that includes an estimated delivery time and a request to keep the line free in case the restaurant needs to call you. Once Food.com receives the order, its computer translates the order into a voice message and makes calls or sends faxes to the restaurant. Although delivery times vary, you can expect to be eating within 30 minutes of placing your order.

Waiter.Com (www.waiter.com), in Sunnyvale, California, offers many features similar to those found on Food.com, including a personal start page called "My Waiter." It also offers "WaiterPoints," a loyalty program for earning free food. Waiter.Com has also partnered with some of the most popular restaurant chains, including Chili's Grill & Bar and California Pizza Kitchen. Waiter.Com's coverage is, however, limited. With only 1,300 restaurants in its network and most of them in California, your chances of finding more than one or two restaurants outside that state are slim.