In the photo above is a common dish I'd make - a dairy-free baked macaroni with cheddar shreds and turkey sauce. The cheddar is made from rice milk instead of cow milk which is how you can make a cheesey like macaroni bake without actual cheese.
Now try finding a recipe with this type of blend in a recipe search on a typical food site.
Yeah, it's not so easy. Why? Because the rice cheddar shreds is typically designated a vegan food and why would you mix something vegan with turkey, a meat? Most people wouldn't but you would for example if you have a dairy allergy like me but still eat meat.
One of my personal beefs about search on food sites is that there is never options for food allergies or intolerances. You can find options for preferences like vegan or vegetarian, but rarely if ever do you see options for things like dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, or egg-free. Because gluten-free has gained so much popularity over the last 2 years, you will find more gluten-free options.
So people like me and millions of others who have food allergies and intolerances have to get creative in our food search or we just have to weed through tons of recipes....
...that is until now. Hello Yummly food search!
When I first heard about Yummly what caught my attention faster than Scooby on snacks was how Yummly can do search with food allergy options. I go visit the site, and besides the food allergy options, I find that I can also specify things like amount of calories, fat, cholesterol, and carbs as well as taste, price, and amount of cooking time.I have options, yay!
Yummly will narrow down the recipe hunt to my specific parameters. Can I tell you how excited I am? Here's a quick example of a search I did incorporating my typical food parameters. I wanted a chicken dish without gluten or dairy that was <500 calories, <20g of fat, and <20g of carbs. Voila! My first choice is lemon rosemary chicken skewers which sounds really tasty.
Where else can you do a specific food search like that? Um, no where else on the web that I could find today...except Yummly.
Currently, Yummly has indexed 500,000 recipes which is pretty good considering that the site is not even a year old yet. Yummly is pulling recipes in from places like All Recipes, Real Simple, and Martha Stewart, and as well individuals like you and me can upload recipes.
While visiting my folks in California for the holidays, I got a chance to interview Dave Feller who is the CEO and Co-Founder of Yummly. I broke the interview into 3 smaller sections for easier viewing. Before we get started, I also want to send a huge thank you to @jenmyronuk for filming the interview with her handy Flipcam.
In Part 1 of 3, we talk about mustard, food allergies, and how Yummly came to be (4:19).
In Part 2 of 3, I ask Dave how Yummly managed to get almost 60,000 Facebook fans in under a year, and in actuality they have way more fans than that, and here's how (2:38).
In Part 3 of 3, the conclusion, we talk about food trends in 2011 (2:55).
Yummly is the first food site I've seen that really gets how people eat in real life. I appreciate how they have taken the time to research and really think about how to make a better food experience for the individual versus the mainstream. Definitely go check out Yummly and some of their popular Facebook pages that you Noshers might enjoy like:
- Yummly Main Facebook Fan Page
- Healthy Food is Yummly
- Vegan Recipe Box on Yummly
- Quick Recipes on Yummly
- And for fun...Bacon is Yummly...because it is!
