These are some sites I've found interesting, intriguing, useful or maybe just humorous.

• From Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, The Old Foodie gives you 400 words each weekday on a topic related to the day, with a historic recipe, and sometimes a menu. And how much fun is that!

• "When something starts pecking its way out of the shell, the egg is probably past its prime." OK. So how do you know when other food is spoiled? This site will put you right.

• Sometimes it's hard to get the message across. Here's a page devoted to eateries and customers trying to make themselves understood.
• 

  They live in small faded books in kitchen drawers throughout the world. A few lurk in my own library, snapped up at school galas and rescued from secondhand book shops. And now they're exposed in the Gallery of Regrettable Food. I recognised many of these awesomely awful dishes. This site is a real delight. It will soon have you laughing. Start with the gelatin! Peas and corn in aspic anyone?

• You know those pictures of kids with their noses pressed up against the cake shop window. That's how I feel when I visit Chocolate Earth. Browse the photo galleries and admire the craftsmanship!

• We often criticise waiters, but how do we look from their perspective? Here's one who pulls no punches.

• Here's a site run by one of my web friends, Jennifer Wickes.

• Pssst! Wanna know a secret? A chef's secret? Peter Hertzmann runs A la Carte, one of the really interesting food sites on the net. He's obsessed with food and his site is a Pandora's Box. Each visit reveals something new. Worth bookmarking for return visits.

Spotlight I am still using the toaster an aunt and uncle gave us for a wedding present in 1977. I think it might almost qualify as an exhibit at the Cyber Toaster Museum. See if your heirlooms are here. The diagram shows the first US toaster. Not too child friendly!

• While we try to eat healthily most of the time, there's that little pig living in most of us that wants to live dangerously once in a while. The Eat Dangerously site provides some temptation. "..you can literally feel it clogging your arteries. Don't worry though, you've got tons of arteries," says the blurb. Mmmm...

• Zest Food Tours guided tours of Wellington (New Zealand) foodie spots is a must for visitors who enjoy the good life. One of its joint owners, Susan McLeary, is a fellow member of the NZ Guild of Food Writers and she and co-owner Catherine Cordwell know the food business and offer interesting options for tour patrons. Check it out.

• A group of enthusiasts in Galveston have taken barbecuing to new levels with a giant burger weighing 29.75 pounds, with a pound of bacon, two pounds of cheese, grilled onions and portabella mushrooms, avocados, tomatoes, lettuce, mustard, ketchup, and a giant toothpick through the centre with deli pickles on top. Follow their amazing culinary journey.
  
  
• Do you want fries with that? More from the burger department. Check out this fellow's giant burger with 54 toppings. See if he manages a clean plate!
  
  
  
  
  
  

• I refer often to Gernot Katzner's Spice Pages. This must be the most comprehensive guide on the net.

• Leite's Culinaria - David Leite's excellent food writing, recipe collections and cooking resources. I can spend a lot of time browsing this site, winner of the 2006 James Beard Award for food website.

• Hub-UK - recipes and tips for lovers of good food and gourmet cooking

• Tallyrand's Culinary Fare - the owner of this website is a chef turned chef tutor in New Zealand and this is a most informative collection of recipes, food info, history and other treasures.

• You look in the fridge and the pantry. Almost as bad as Mother Hubbard's. Help! Cooking By Numbers will help you find a recipe for your meagre assortment.

• Cooking4Chumps the online cook book with easy to use recipes and cheeky but essential culinary tips, tricks and insight

• Here's someone who collects canned meat. At the Potted Meat Museum you can browse more than 150 varieties of canned meat from tripe to pate with the odd fish selection and even some softshell turtle, rattlesnake, alligator (Cajun-style, of course) and elk. Nope, not even the "sun dried and road tenderized" armadillo could tempt me to get out the can opener, thanks.

• You'll have fun at the Crash Test Kitchen. Two Australian ex-pats film themselves preparing dinner. Their video food blog includes their failures as well as their successes! I like their style.

• Want to locate a vintage cookbook? Old Cookbooks will help you source them. Wartime books, how to bake by the ration book, celebrity cookbooks, books that came with kitchen appliances, cookbooks from particular eras. How about 10 Cakes Husbands Like Best? Fun to browse - and to see how cookbooks have changed over the years. A good resource in itself.

• I've been tempted to make my own cheese and I think David B Fankhauser might be the man to teach me. His cheesemaking for beginners is an interesting read.

• Chemistry was my favourite subject at school so the science of cooking has always fascinated me. Here's an excerpt from Robert L Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook.

• Two favourite online spice shops - in New Zealand there's Spice Wise and in Australia there's Herbie's Spices. I've bought from both and can thoroughly recommend them for excellent products. When the orders arrives (very speedily in both cases) just opening the package is an experience in itself!

• Really scary recipes from really scary vintage cookbooks. Pigs' feet fried, sweetbreads creamed in cucumber boats, jellied salad Nicoise. Dangerous living.

• There are plenty of kitchen myths. Here Peter Aitken explodes a few of them - with documentation in some cases.

• Google wild food directory - got a plague of locusts? Turn them into a tasty snack. Or how about woodlice pie?

• Here's something else scary, from the people who invented the TV dinner, a dieter's nightmare. And here's what a reviewer said of the Worst Breakfast Ever.

• It's well worth spending some time at The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters. It's garnished with lots of good writing.

• If you've ever struggled with the periodic table, check this table of condiments that periodically go bad. Good for a chuckle.

Spotlight I was going to say "This you've gotta try!" But maybe not! Imagine the guests' faces. Over at Jason Buckley's site he has a collection of 70s recipe cards and this awe-inspiring Frankfurther Crown Roast just happens to be one of them.

• Don't mention Bambi! Here's a collection of recipes for New Zealand venison from a number of New Zealand chefs.

• I don't think I'll try this one but here is a way to cook an egg using two cellphones. A lot of people fell for it.

• If you're finding it hard making ends meet, check out Sophie's Gray's Destitute Gourmet site.

• Here's someone who has devoted a website to recipes using animals' testicles and says "they're edible and when prepared properly, quite tasty." So if you have the ingredients in search of a recipe, try here.

• No handymen in my family so I guess I won't be getting a solar cooker. But you might want to make one.

• Odd Spot: Maggots, a dripping nose, a used bandaid. The Candy Addict has lined up some of the worst confectionery you're ever likely to encounter. The Fear Factor range includes a chicken foot, a pig's snout, a sheep's eye, a cow's heart. And the site has plenty more weird candy to browse. Only in America?

• Lots of Australian links

• I like those little squiggles baristas put on my coffee. Here's some elegant coffee art.

• Slow food is catching on. The movement, founded in 1986, now has more than 80,000 members in over 100 countries.

• Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian: Julia Child shared the passions, philosophies and products of this kitchen in her home with family and friends, colleagues and friends for 45 years. She donated the kitchen to the National Museum of American History in 2001. Here you can browse the kitchen, inspect individual pieces of equipment, read stories (how, for instance, Child spent two years and 284lbs of flour getting her 22-page recipe for French bread just right). Julia Child died in 2004 aged 91.

• Bush Tucker Sites: Bush Tucker Plants, Indigenous Australia (a site written entirely by Aboriginal people), a collection of relevant sites, the Bushfood Directory, Aboriginal Bush Food and Medicine and Benjamin Christie's Australian and Bush Tucker Recipes.

• Lots of good Aussie stuff here at Images Australia - songs, pictures, slang.

• A la cuisine is a website belonging to a young man in his mid-20s who is fascinated by food. His day job has nothing to do with food but he appears to be very adept in the kitchen and it's worth browsing round and lookimg at some of his work.

• Saute Wednesday - Bruce Cole's very useful site of random links to food articles and other bits of cork in your wine glass.

• I don't know if Laura Bush rolls up her sleeves and cooks for George W, but here are some of her recipes.

• And if you'd like some royal recipes to try at home, here's a selection from assorted Buckingham Palace banquets.