Chocoholic Anonymous

Welcome to my little corner of the World Wide Web. You will find that that this particular niche in the internet revolves around my passion for food in all its varied forms. The name of the site is more of a self descriptor than an indication of content. While I am, in fact, a self declared (and proud of it) chocoholic, I certainly hope to explore many more ingredients and flavors on this site than chocolate alone (not that chocolate alone could not easily provide plenty of content for any website!).

You could say that the Chit Chat area is one of the driving forces behind creating this website. I have been a long-time fan of (and lurker on) many food blogs across the Net and the world. In my food blog travels I have found two things to be true:

1. Food blogs are, without a doubt, one of the best places to find wonderful new recipes to try.
2. Many food bloggers enjoy being involved in groups and challenges related to cooking and/or baking.

In fact, I started to see many of the same wonderful recipes showing up across the blogs that I like to frequent. I thought that was unlikely to be a coincidence and I noticed that these particular blog entries were all prefaced with things like "TWD," "Daring Baker," and "IC." Ever curious, I poked around the internet until I discovered what these things were all about. It turns out that these were all web based groups of people that share a passion for baking and have found a way to explore that passion together despite their often far flung locations. Now this was something that caught my attention; something I thought I would really like to be a part of. The only thing stopping me was my lack of a blog of my own. I have corrected that lack with Chocoholic Anonymous Chit Chat so you can expect to see me showing up on the blog rolls for at least some of these baking groups in the very near future.

The recipe index is a project that I decided to undertake quite some time ago, but until now it has been a series of aborted attempts for a variety of reasons. When I decided to launch this website I was determined that it would include a recipe index or I would not launch it at all. Originally, the concept of the recipe index was motivated by my desire to more easily share recipes with my mother. We frequently trade recipes back and forth - something that has always involved dictation over the phone, "snail" mail or e-mail exchanges. None of these methods is very convenient and they have led to recipes in a myriad of formats and scattered locations. I sincerely hope that the Chocoholic Anonymous Recipe Index will make our recipe sharing and storing troubles a thing of the past; and since I don't believe in "secret" recipes I've decided to share it with all of you!
There are however, as you may have guessed, some ground rules:

• While anyone can view recipes, membership is required in order to submit recipes (don't worry, signup is easy!)
• New recipes require approval before they become visible, in most cases approval will require actual testing of the recipe and a "due diligence" effort to make sure that the recipe is either original or properly cited so please be patient.
• Please give credit where it is due. If I post a recipe on this site that originated elsewhere I will link back to the original location or provide appropriate copyright information and I ask that you give me the same courtesy.