As a restaurant family, we find ourselves dining out with our children often. Our kids started going to restaurants early on. In fact, Louisiana’s first real food eaten was at Lola. She was a mere 6 months old and we went out to dinner for my MIL’s birthday. As we stuffed our faces with some Michael Symon deliciousness, our girl decided that she wanted in on the fun. She reached across the table while our heads were turned and before we knew it she was chomping down on crispy pigs ear.

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I have something to admit.

I love lists. Especially Top 5 lists. I think it stems from the fact that High Fidelty is one of my top 5 favorite movies…

That being said, I think it’s about time for a foodie app list that doesn’t suck Yelp’s balls or honor the greatness of Epicurious. Let’s talk real foodie apps. Apps that actually can be used in everyday culinary situations, apps that can help you make conscious food decisions, apps that help you develop the skills it takes to become a true cook, & apps that help you find, local, sustainable, & fresh food!

Here are my top 5 favorite foodie apps:

1. Seafood Watch is great because in an instant you can immediately find out if the fish you were thinking about ordering off the menu is that of a sustainable nature, or an over-fished / over-harvested / on the verge of mass extinction species like the Blue Fin Tuna. 

2. Ratio rocks because it is the core of cooking. It has the basic ratio’s for everything known to the cook/chef. Ratio has the formula’s for anything and everything from bread to cookies to sauces. It can also be used as a culinary calculator if you need to change the size of your recipe. Ratio is also awesome because it was written by Ruhlman, a pretty cool Cleveland dude. 

3. Ask The Butcher is a great app that enables the home cook to understand the differences between cuts of meat and has an awesome cooking timer: you pick the doneness & cut, it tells you how long to cook (loves). It is also chock fully of meaty recipes, info & where to find your favorite cuts (in AU), & super cool blackboard images of cuts of meat.

4. Locavore is great for one thing only: finding Farmer’s Markets. Locavore also claims to be able find the best local produce & protein around you however I found this feature half assed & not correct. Lemons aren’t local in Ohio yo! The farmer’s market map is the bomb though.

5. Harvest is your guide to selecting the freshest, ripest, healthiest and best-tasting produce. Whether it’s knocking on watermelons, smelling pineapples, squeezing avocados, or examining the color of peaches, you’ll always know the best approach. This app rocks my world. I am not the most educated when it comes to knowing which produce is ripe, over ripe, or rotten. 

Those are my foodie faves, what are some of yours????? 

We went to Noodlecat for lunch last week and the Chef gave the mini’s a seasame seed wasabi rice krispy treat (it’s the bomb diggity yo) for dessert. Now everytime we go there that’s all they want. Screw ramen, give me wasabi rice krispy treat MOM!! Problem is, they aren’t a daily item, and today after a long bike ride into the city, the mini’s may or may not have been acting like those kids you see on Nanny 911. I did what every good parent would do to get them to not be pyscho & swore on my love of Ewan McGregor that we would make rice krispy treats when we got home.

We got home and I went in search of ingredients. There is not alot to these low fat (HA!) delectables, so I decided to kick it up a notch. I had developed a minor Nutella addiction while living in Italy, and have since then dutifully instilled the same in my children. The boy recently learned how to make his very own peanut butter & nutella sammy and has since eaten one every. single. day. Thank god for baby teeth and hazelnuts (it’s healthy I swear!!).

I consulted with my cooking assistants and we all decided that Nutella must be a part of our crispy rice treat.

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