et's eat our way to peace. That's the plan of the folks behind Global Table Adventure, and they want us to join them. Each week, Sasha, her daughter, Ava, and her husband, Keith (aka Mr. Picky), take us to a country through the food they eat. They share wonderful recipes, photos and stories about the food and each country. An interactive map shows you where they've "been" - they're "visiting" 196 countries alphabetically - and links you to all the posts about these spots. You can also go straight to the recipes, which are helpfully organized by type of dish, celebrations and lifestyles. Even though they only add recipes weekly, there's something happening every day, from meals and cuisines, to techniques, tidbits and travel. Beautifully conceived and designed, this site indeed gives us all a good reason to get together around a table.

ey Dollface,ready for a little giggle water? Then click on over to Lackadaisy. When you do, you'll step into the amazing world of Tracy J. Butler, who has created an entire underground world of dames and cats, although in this case, all the characters are really cats. Butler has created 11 distinctive characters that hang around a speakeasy in St. Louis of old. There are more than 100 complete comics in gorgeous detail as well as an introduction to the characters, a glossary of era terms, fascinating explanations of how Butler creates the comics, and tutorials on how to draw and paint. There are also a gallery of early and completed drawings and guest artists' attempts at taking on the mugs of Lackadaisy. It all creates a world where throwing back a little giggle water sounds like a grand idea.

ut it into context.When it comes to words, that's the focus of Wordnik. This clean, fast site provides definitions from multiple sources as well as related and similar words, all to help you grasp a word's meaning. The site has nearly 7 million unique words, almost a billion example sentences, more than a quarter million comments, and more than 80,000 Wordniks. Wordniks can't submit definitions yet, but in addition to lists, they can make comments in the Community section. There's a word of the day and a random word, but I like looking up a word I want to understand better and just browsing its context. For each word, in addition to lists, you get definitions from multiple sources, example sentences, and several types of related words - in short, everything you need to see how a word fits into the bigger picture of language and meaning.

ool site. That's what you'll find at coolcapitals.com. This joint initiative of like-minded tourism offices of some of Europe's coolest locales starts off with a stylish woman with wild headgear that blows the names of the five cities across the screen. You can then just click on the names of the places - Amsterdam, Zürich, Vienna, Valencia, and Antwerp - to learn more about each city's art, architecture, food, fashion and design, making the site helpful for business and pleasure travelers. coolcapitals.com simply links to each city's own site, each of which is distinctive and comprehensive. Each site's offerings are available in several languages, and includes travel and hotel information as well as tips for meetings and events. Even if you can't jet off to one of these cities, you can enjoy them vicariously through this truly cool portal.

ducation everywhere. For free. That's the goal of Academic Earth. It's already fulfilling its mission by sharing lessons from 15 of the United States' top universities, including Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Yale. You can select courses by university, instructor or subject, giving you a number of ways to choose which classes you want to take. All of the courses are presented as video, letting you watch and listen,back up, and watch again. You can also search for what you want, or check out playlists created by the site's editors and even create your own by setting up a free account. The playlists are fun because you can create your own "courses" and listen to the best professors regardless of school affiliation. It's all part of making education the best it can be, wherever you may be.