In 1996, Lori Alden created the FoodSubs website after a neighbor spent half a day searching for filberts because she didn’t realize that hazelnuts were an almost identical substitute. Lori kept adding to the website, and at last count it has 3,406 ingredients, 8,196 substitutes, 8,565 synonyms, and 2,473 photos.
In her quest for new ingredients, she’s visited a horsemeat stand in Paris, almost totaled her car by leaving a cut durian in the trunk, and managed to convince a skeptical Mexican butcher in broken Spanish that, yes, she really did want the Rocky Mountain Oysters (also known as bull testicles, bollocks, swinging beef, Montana tendergroin, bull balls, and huevos del toro).
In 2022, her daughter, Margaret Stevens, updated the website and now manages it.