Food for thought: Free rice inspires free kibble

Even if you haven’t tried it yet, you’ve probably heard about FreeRice, the free, online vocabulary game that awards points in the form of grains of rice. To play, you choose the best synonyms for words like “farinaceous” or “filbert”. Every time you choose the right word, you earn 20 grains of rice and the next word is more difficult. If you miss, you don’t earn the rice for that question, but are given an easier word to try. The rice you win is paid for by the advertisers you see at the bottom of the screen as you play and is distributed through the UN World Food Program.

Unless you caught it on Central Oregon’s local news, however, you probably haven’t heard of FreeKibble. This site, started by a local 11-year-old, rewards your answer (right or wrong) to a daily trivia question about dogs with a donation of 10 pieces of kibble to the Humane Society of Central Oregon. The kibble is sponsored by local businesses, and it will be delivered to the Humane Society once a month.

Granted, winning donations through games is not the same as finding long-term solutions to any of the world’s hunger problems. If you’re going to waste time on the net though (no!) it’s probably more productive than browsing celebrity baby pictures.

Movin’ to Foodsville

It’s not often that my contribution to infodoodads could have just as easily been a post here, but the site I reviewed, Foodsville, is pretty sweet if you’re at all interested in the history of food.

Tools I use

Jeff and I are both travelling for most of this week so I didn’t plan a menu. Instead, I’m going to share some of the online tools I use on a regular basis to help plan our menu and stick to our budget.

Wesabe might not be as exciting for folks who already use some kind of personal finance software, but I’ve only recently joined the club; that’s why I thought I was spending only half as much as I really was at the grocery store! With Wesabe’s tagging feature I can easily track our grocery purchases. As soon as transactions from my bank are uploaded I can “tag” them as groceries. Since I’ve set myself a goal (to spend no more than $300/month on groceries) Wesabe automatically lets me know how much I have left to spend. I could write an entire post just to rave about Wesabe…maybe I will! (update: I did.)

Epicurious has been around forever but it’s still my favorite place to find new recipes. It’s been a big help with the goal to eat more vegetarian meals in particular. The browse feature lets me sort out all the recipes for meatless main dishes, then narrow my search down even further by whether the recipe is quick to prepare, has grains or beans as a main ingredient, and even which recipes are best for a particular season (I’m so glad spring is here!) I also love the technique videos; you too can learn knife skills on the internet!

Chowhound, as with any large group of highly opinionated folks, can be exhausting sometimes. Mostly though, it’s a great resource for both eating in and eating out. There are regional and international message boards for food-specific discussions plus a very active “home cooking” board. There are lots of folks ready to recommend their favorite Christmas desserts, Indian cookbooks, and crock pots.

MyGroceryDeals is a new addition to my weekly grocery routine. Since we don’t get the newspaper I was missing out on the weekly ads. MyGroceryDeals is a single interface where I can browse the weekly specials for almost all the grocery stores in town at once. The “make a list” feature is a little clunky and a few of the prices have been off, but over all I really like knowing prices around town. I don’t usually go to all the stores on my list, but it lets me comparison shop more effectively.

Does anyone else have favorite sites they use for meal planning, cooking and/or budgeting? Post a comment and let me know!