Belt-Tightening, Web Style

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Now serving: tilapia, ground beef and rice-potatoes-bread.

That's not a new flavor combo; those ingredients are among the most popular in online recipe search terms by the 7 million unique visitors each month to Allrecipes.com, a food-based social networking Web site with more than 40,000 recipes submitted by home cooks.

Allrecipes.com's marketing vice president, Esmee Williams, says the Seattle-based company began tracking certain low-cost ingredients in January, as consumers were faced with higher food prices. After the data were adjusted to remove regular increases in site traffic and comparisons were drawn against the first three months of 2007, Allrecipes.com found:

· There were increases in recipe searches for rice (90 percent), potatoes (110 percent) and bread (99 percent).

· Searches for ground beef recipes increased 117 percent, while searches for recipes that featured steak increased 83 percent.

· Casserole searches were up 30 percent.

· Searches for tilapia recipes increased at a much higher rate than searches for salmon recipes, although the three-month total for salmon searches this year was 455,214 vs. 229,724 for tilapia searches.

· Page views for "make at home" versions of restaurant pizza and Chinese and Indian food increased 79 percent over the same three months last year.