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Many excellent food sites have recipe boxes that will organize your favorites, from appetizers to desserts. But they're usually presented in a text-heavy list; you have to click through for photos. Not Pinterest, though. The personal bulletin board service is built on images (99% of which are totally drool-worthy), so you can click through colorful displays of noodle soups, pink and green cupcakes, cheesy pull-apart bread, icy margaritas with their glasses rimmed in salt, and so on.

Like Facebook, Twitter and other popular social sites, Pinterest starts out as a simple lark and can quickly become a time-suck. But it can also be a great way to get ideas (What should I make for dinner tonight? What can I bring to my neighbor's house for that potluck next week? What can I do with this avocado besides make guacamole?). Before you fall down the Pinterest rabbit hole, here are a few pieces of advice:

DO create separate boards for each subject you like. Favorite recipes and drinks are common, but you don't have to be limited by broad categories. I've seen boards for canning, "inspiring cookies" and even peanut butter pies. Users can follow all your boards or just a single board.

DON'T just follow your friends. As with Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest lets you create a list of people to follow. It's fun to follow friends, of course, but some of the most interesting recipes you'll find on Pinterest might come from people you don't know. You can follow Oprah's Pinterest boards for everything from winter soups to delectable desserts, and here are 5 more fantastic boards I've started following:
Jane Wang's Delicious board
Allison Butt's Recipes board
Callye Alvarado's My Love Affair with Fig board
Marly's Best Vegetarian Sandwiches board
Whole Foods Market's Cheese Is the Bee's Knees board


DO repin. Once a user pins an image, others can repin it, which is how content spreads virally. So if you see something you like, click the "repin" button. Big images are best (think one cupcake instead of 20), since when another user looks at your profile, all your pins will appear as thumbnails, and larger shots will be easier to see at a glance.

DO add a bookmark to your Web browser. This way, you can pin images to one of your boards from other sites outside of Pinterest, whether it's a vintage apron from Sur la Table or a chicken pot pie recipe from Oprah.com. Here's how to do install the Pinterest bookmark.

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