Today I’m going to provide a quick look at how I do what I do here on Simply Sumptuous. (No worries, though, I’ll be back Monday with something especially delicious for all of you.)

I suppose the most compelling question has to do with where I look for recipes. Contrary to what you may think, I spend little to no time leafing through cookbooks. It’s inordinately time-consuming, and, let’s face it, most cookbooks simply do not have enough pictures. And when I’m looking for a recipe, I don’t want a some kind of short story to accompany it. I want pictures. Lots of them.

Enter the food blogging community on the interwebs.

Let’s begin with [foodgawker.com](http://foodgawker.com/), a website that’s so beautiful it gives me an inferiority complex. There you can literally “feast your eyes” (their horrible pun, not mine) on pictures of food linked to their source blogs. It’s practically an art gallery. Here’s how it works: Food bloggers like me sign up to be a member, and as a member, you are allowed to submit your photographs for publication. It’s not some uber-exclusive site for professional chefs. Quite to the contrary, actually.

Next, there’s [foodporndaily.com](http://foodporndaily.com). The name says it all.

I’ve mentioned Heidi Swanson’s [101Cookbooks.com](http://www.101cookbooks.com) plenty of times already. She puts a strong emphasis on cooking with all-natural, minimally processed, locally grown foods. While I admire her efforts and have enjoyed all of the recipes I’ve tried from her site, I think it does takes a considerable amount of money (and extra effort) to put this particular food philosophy in practice, especially if you are a college student. However, I think there’s something to be said for making small changes gradually–or at least trying out some of the innovative strategies she employs in her own kitchen.

I visit Sydney Kania’s [Crepes of Wrath](http://thecrepesofwrath.wordpress.com/) a lot–she’s a college student at Arizona State University, so I think her perspective on cooking is particularly interesting. In the same vein, one of my high school friends, Jennifer Derri, has her own food blog, [Student Kitchen](http://students.adelphi.edu/blogs/kitchen/blog.php), through Adelphi University. Then there’s [twospoons](http://twospoons.wordpress.com/), “a collection of students’ attempts at cooking deliciously inexpensive, easy, and fun food”–it’s a good resource for first-time cooks and a fairly well-organized website. Overall, I think these three sites are definitely worth looking at because they’re all created by students with fellow students in mind.

Have fun browsing these sites, and enjoy the fabulous weather in Madison today.