GreenBkk Tech | Google wants you to eat Brussels sprouts

Google wants you to eat Brussels sprouts

Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)

By John D. Sutter, CNN

Google linked to Thanksgiving recipes on its homepage on Thursday.

(CNN) -- Looking for last-minute recipes? You won't have to search further than Google.com.

The search engine turned its logo on Thursday into an interactive smorgasbord of Thanksgiving foods -- each of which links to a recipe.

Among the choices are roasted Brussels sprouts, which isn't exactly an American favorite. The recipe comes from the TV chef Ina Garten, perhaps better known as the "Barefoot Contessa," and includes a bunch of salt and olive oil.

You could make these looked-down-upon veggies more delicious by turning to other websites, too. You could add bacon, as The Food Network's Rachael Ray suggests. Or go the southern route -- a la celebrity chef Paula Deen -- and pour in a cup of melted butter.

The other Google "doodle" recipes sound a little tastier. They include: roast turkey, smashed sweet potatoes, popovers, cranberry fruit conserve and a pumpkin banana mousee tart.

It's clear that many people in the United States were turning to the internet for advice about food and Thanksgiving on Thursday morning. All of the top 10 "hot searches" on Google were focused on the holiday. Six of them were focused on cooking, with some of the popular searches including "butterball turkey cooking instructions" and "butterball turkey hotline."

Last Thanksgiving, the New York Times used search data from Allrecipes.com to compile a fascinating look at regional cooking trends. Based on the foods people were searching for, it appears that few people in the northeast United States like pecan pie. Macaroni and cheese is a southern Thanksgiving dish. And pumpkin pie, which was the second most popular search term overall, is a hot dish in the Pacific northwest (although, you could serve it cold).

The San Francisco Chronicle noted that the Google recipes are hosted by that website -- so instead of linking out to recipes on cooking sites, Google keeps the Web traffic squarely on Google.com.

"So, on Thanksgiving, Google is competing with every other recipe site on the web, and is once again, officially, a media company," the paper writes.

For more on Thanksgiving and food, check out CNN's Eatocracy blog and CNN iReport, where you can share recipes and stories of your own.

Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)