Blogs are websites maintained by individuals who supply regular, diary-like entries, along with links to other sites. (Popular food sites like chowhound.com and egullet.com are not blogs but community message boards.) Because the links can be so interesting, combing the blogosphere is akin to shopping in a fabulous and unorganized used bookstore: You never know what you will come across. While browsing food blogs, I found some fantastic stand-alone messages, including: a colorful "table of condiments that periodically go bad" (web.mit.edu/dryfoo/www/Info/condiments.html), where I learned: "Hollandaise, 1 day; Miracle Whip, 3 months; Sugar, 2 years; Cheese Wiz, N/A." I found a site that lets you read some excellent Thai recipes while listening to Thai elevator music (www.chetbacon.com/ thai-html/thai.html). I also found the story of a man who tried for an hour and a half to cook a goose egg with a hair dryer and two cellphones (www.funjunkie.co.uk/comments.cfm/article=b52e8c8f-28c1- 48b d-a4b9-25ffacdeb81a).

If [Julie Powell] is the Laurie Colwin of the blog set, then mmw, the author of bad things (badthings.blogspot.com), is the A.J. Liebling -- an obsessive reader and critic of food-related literature, from this newspaper to the Western Farm Press to the National Academy of Sciences report on how federal agencies should assess the safety of genetically altered food (hence his links are unusually wide-ranging). He is tireless, opinionated and hectoring. Here's a characteristic rant: "Listen, yuppies: a tomato is not a good tomato simply because it is an 'heirloom.' ["Heirloom" links to a San Francisco Chronicle story on the glories of this kind of tomato.] A tomato is good because it is grown carefully in optimal conditions, with as little water as possible, picked ripe, and never refrigerated. Ninety percent of 'heirloom' tomatoes are just as revolting as the crap you get at the supermarket."

Not all food bloggers are ranters. Some are earnest types who just have something positive to share. Take Clotilde Dusoulier, author of Chocolate & Zucchini (chocolateandzucchini.com), a current darling of the blog set. The adorable 25-year-old Frenchwoman lives in the Parisian quarter of Montmartre with her boyfriend, Maxence. You can just see Audrey Tautou playing her in the movie as she traipses all over Paris, finding the bakery supply store that her grandmother shopped at, eating out, cooking and writing down recipes and shopping tips (with pronunciations included), along with insights into French life ("On Sunday, Marie-Laure came over 'pour le gouter.' Le gouter is the afternoon snack kids are given when they come out of school around 4. In my family, it is also called simply le the, and is practically an institution.") Her recipes are simple, charming and fun.