Judging a recipe by its cover

I have stacks - and I mean STACKS - of cookbooks. But I haven't cracked any of them open in ages. They're neatly packed away in boxes in the basement, waiting till we move to a home where I can get them up on to shelves.

In the meantime, I turn to the internet when I need a recipe. My mother had a recipe box where she filed away her favourites. I have a folder of bookmarks in my browser. There are a few sites I trust to give me decent results each time - BBC Food, Epicurious, the NY Times (though now that the paywall is up I will be using that less) - but more often than not I end up using a recipe from a blog I've never heard of.

The results can be hit or miss for sure. Many home bakers use way more sugar than I normally would, for example. But there are some amazing cooks out there and one of the best things about the internet is the way it connects us all together.

I have taken to using Google's image search in conjunction with a web search to get to the best recipes. That's not to say a recipe without a photo or with a bad photo will not give good returns, but I like the ability to see what I'm going to get before I dive in.