Nothing exemplifies the “world community” aspect of the Internet like the cornucopia of recipe options available online. You can find anything from the sublime to the absurd and everything in between—much like a house full of relatives home for the holidays. You can’t choose your relatives but you can choose what you eat, so I set out to cull the Web’s compendium of culinary listings for the cream of the crop.

Querying a leading search engine for the word “recipes” yielded 3,983,370 entries, so if you hope to have the bird in the oven before the next millennium, try refining your search. For example, searching the same engine for “Thanksgiving recipes” delivered 1211 pages—still daunting, but more manageable. To pare the options down further, start with a search engine like MSN Search, that organizes sites by topic into a directory. In just a few clicks, you will have at your fingertips a page of listings organizing sites by anything from “countries and cultures” to “gluten-free.”

You will find as many great food and recipe sites as there are people claiming to be Santa Claus around the holidays, and everyone’s tastes vary, so toss away your dog-eared cookbook, grab your mouse, and go exploring. To point you in the right direction, here are some of my standout picks.

For the culinarily curious
Epicurious Food offers more than 10,000 recipes from food magazines Gourmet and Bon Appetit. The site has an attractive and easy-to-use retro look that allows you to navigate food and drink recipes, seasonal recipe suggestions, and expert cooking tips, all with links to purchase products from kitchenware retailer Williams-Sonoma. An Enhanced Search feature allows you select the main ingredient, course, cuisine, preparation method, or season or occasion. Most recipes have been rated by other users and include their helpful comments. The “Drinking” section of the site can suggest wines to go with your Thanksgiving turkey, or the perfect cocktail to liven up a holiday party.

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To shop or to cook?
Also covering all things culinary is Cooking.com. Shopping opportunities abound, from gourmet foods to cookware and cutlery, making this a good site to visit if you have a cook on your holiday shopping list. The site is easy to use, and offers lots of information, recipes, and holiday meal planners from celebrity chefs. Other features include a glossary of food terms and links from recipes to purchase specialty-food items on the site.

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Links, links, and more links
To avoid offers to buy a new set of kitchen equipment every time you look for a recipe, try the Kitchen Link. The Kitchen Link is an exhaustive--sometimes exhausting--listing of recipes and food-related links and information. My Kitchen Link experience can be summed up in one word: Turducken. For the uninitiated, Turducken is a chicken stuffed inside a duck inside a turkey. If that doesn’t have you crying "fowl," one more click and I was at a recipe for a whole stuffed camel! The eclectic range of recipes found here are all submitted by users. The site has a friendly, grassroots appeal, but the quantity of information can be overwhelming. Features of note include daily chats on given food topics, links to famous chefs’ own Web pages, and message boards for exchanging ideas. Definitely the place to find diverse recipes, or to meet other aspiring chefs.

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All recipes, no fuss
AllRecipes.com is just that: all recipes. Like Kitchen Link, recipes are submitted by users; however, they are reviewed by an editorial team before appearing on the site, then indexed in a directory. AllRecipes.com also has a network of food-specific sites, which form the Recipe Network. You can quickly narrow your search by going directly to a tailored site such as ThanksgivingRecipe.com or PieRecipe.com. Other notable features include daily highlighted recipes, a multi-lingual glossary of food terms, and a free e-mail newsletter.

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An old standby
Finally, if you hunger for something as safe and trustworthy as a trip to Mom’s house for meatloaf, Betty Crocker  is your place. The recipes found here are all developed and approved by professional home economists in the Betty Crocker Kitchens. Betty offers plenty of advice, coupons, a weekly menu planner, printable recipes and shopping lists, and a “what’s on hand” feature, which allows you to find recipes based on foods you have on hand. All the information is well organized and easily searchable.

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There are a lot more cooking and recipe sites out there, so whether your holiday feast includes roasted turkey or treats from Turkey, you'll find a recipe online. Roll up your sleeves, put on your apron, and go find whatever your tastes desire!

Mark Reed is still unable to find the recipe for Krispy Kreme doughnuts.