Goodbye Fooddownunder.com...you will be missed

A few years ago, my brother introduced me to a food website called fooddownunder.com. It wasn't fancy - there were no pictures or ads, and it wasn't endorsed by any celebrities, but it was a great resource. Whether you wanted to cook an authentic Indian meal, find a new twist on home made hamburgers, or just felt like browsing random recipes in search of dinner time inspiration, fooddownunder.com was the place to go. But alas, fooddownunder.com's glorious and extensive collection of recipes is no longer to be found - it appears that the URL expired and has been snapped up by some money grubbing meany and filled with useless sponsored links.

In honour of this sad occasion, here are a few words from my brother which really evoke the meaning that fooddownunder.com had for our family, and probably for countless others:

This morning I was chatting with my sister about what to cook for my date this evening and I decided to make Korean short ribs as one of the two meat dishes. When I make Korean short ribs I refer to a special recipe that I found online, and follow without fault. It is not often that you find a recipe that you like so much that you will go through great lengths to insure that the ingredients are portioned exactly as directed by the recipe. The recipe that I use won $15000 USD in a competition in Korea. The cook took the liberty to share it with the world through Fooddownunder.com. In preparation for the evening of cooking I sat down in front of my computer to make a grocery list. When I went to load the recipe I was redirected to another site. Fooddownunder.com is no longer. Fooddownunder was a unique community. It was a collaboration of over 100000 recipes shared by people who all had something in common; an understanding of the gift of food. Not every recipe was perfect, but each person who took the time to post their recipes was trying, and giving. If I had ever cooked for you, take a moment in silence this afternoon and pay tribute Fooddownunder.com. I didn't just use Fooddownunder to find a variety of recipes to create my own unique dishes, I used it as my personal "recipe box". I used bookmarks in my browser in the same way that people use cue cards to collect recipes. Fooddownunder has been there without fail to help assemble recipes for countless nights of cooking and sharing with family and friends. It proved to be an unlimited source of inspiration since I discovered it nearly six years ago. If you attended Naivasha and Hannes' wedding, each dish that was served had at least one ingredient that was recommended in a recipe from the site. It was more than just a website, it was part of me.