Networking, and finding a food community!

When I started my grocery budgeting networking via the internet was not as popular. Although I was also not that interested. While I was starting the budgeting process what I needed the most was to hear from other people what they did with budgeting, I needed to read recipes, basically I needed a community of support.

In September I started searching for some networking devices. I found tons!
1. Twitter! Tons of chefs and financial advisors have twitter pages that you can follow. Many celebrity chefs will post recipes, pictures and links to videos. Also, most of them reply to your "tweets"
2. Facebook fan pages. Lots of chefs have facebook fan pages. Although these are likely not run by the chef themselves there are usually thousands of people that follow and that respond to eachother.
* my personal favourites for the top two are Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Pasta Channel, CookingwithAmy and Offal_Chris.

3. Look for your favourite chef's website. Most have a community you can be part of to submit recipes, as well as see recipes from other members and the chef's themselves. I've recently joined Paula Deen's community. www.pauladeen.com. She sets up her community accounts similar to a facebook or myspace page, basically you can give as much or as little information about your self for others to see. Once to twice a week Paula and her team post a webisode where they challenge their community members to submit their versions of the recipe. They post the best looking and tasting ones on the website.

4. Finally, search youtube!