The Top 5 iPod Apps for Foodies

Sure a good cookbook can be your best friend in the kitchen, but just imagine if your cookbooks came with built-in timers that start and stop themselves right when you need them. Or what about local dining guides that help you sift through the chain restaurants and get straight to the good stuff no matter what city you're in?
Here are five iPod apps that'll help you eat better whether you're at home or on the road. 

1. Ratio ($4.99) Michael Ruhlman's unique cookbook Ratio changed the way that many home cooks think about food. His theory: with just 32 "critical ratios" you've got everything you need to produce thousands of dishes without a recipe. For example want to make cookies? That's 1 part sugar, 2 parts, fat, and 3 parts butter. The iPod app version has got the full content of the book, plus a handy automatic calculator that tells you precisely how much of each ingredient you'll need to make a specified amount of the finished dish, it's guaranteed to wean you off the recipes and have you baking with confidence.
 
2. How to Cook Everything ($4.99) A full $35 hardcover book for under $5? Yes, please! The iPod version of Mark Bittman's (of the New York Times) encyclopedic homage to simple cooking contains every recipe from the tome (over 2,000 of them!), all of the hand-drawn illustrations, and a number of neat touches like a shopping list generator and an automatic timer that clicks on and off as you work through the recipes. Thoughtful features like the ability to search recipes by ingredient or preparation time make it one of the most useful tools for putting a hot home-cooked meal on the table, even on a busy week night.

3. CookIt ($.99) How many times have you forgotten about the potatoes roasting in the oven because you were paying attention to the sauce simmering on the stovetop? Well no more. CookIt's simple interface allows you t o run a separate timer for each item you are cooking with an! audio/v ibrate alarm. It'll also calculate exactly when you need to start cooking each item in order for them to arrive at the table all at the same time. Sometimes the most useful tools are the simplest.

4. Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Guide (Free) These days with all the problems our fish stocks are facing, going out to a seafood restaurant can be a crapshoot. Am I potentially destroying the ocean's ecosystem with each bite of this delicious sashimi? The Monterey Bay Aquarium's guide is fast, simple, and intuitive to use, pr oviding sustainability information on every type of seafood imaginable, ranked as green, orange, or red, depending on how threatened they are. With automatic updates, it's the most authoritative guide on the market. 

5. Yelp (Free) Despite lingering accusations that Yelp manipulates rankings based on how much advertising money a business offers them, it still remains the most useful app for getting recommendations from the locals. Whatever city you're in, its restaurant and business database (searchable by type of food and product, price, location, and ranking) comes with hundreds of reviews by real people, not professional re! viewers. So whether you're looking for the best spot for a late night slice of pizza or the best farmer's market in the area, you're guaranteed to get an honest opinion. And built in integration with Google maps will get you there in record time.
 
 What are your favorite foodie iPhone apps?

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