Foodie Manga Recommendations
Amaama to Inazauma (Sweetness and Lightening)
I discovered this by accident when viewing my amazon recommendations. It's about a widower/school teacher learning how to cook for his daughter from one of his students whose family runs a diner. It sort of reminds me of Yotsuba if every chapter was about food. There's no weird romance subplot with the teacher and the student albeit it is suggested that she may have a crush on him. The art has a light, wispy look to it which easy on the eyes. The manga sort of doubles as a cookbook giving some instructions on how to make each dish with measurements although I not sure how reliable they are. In terms of character development...from what I've seen, I don't think it exists. It's pretty much a slice of life look at a single parent cooking new dishes for their kid kind of story.
It's also an anime--I haven't seen it.
The opposite of this story is:
Yakumo-san wa Edzuke ga Shitai (Yakumo wants to Feed)
I seriously thought this was gonna be porn. It's not.
A widow (Yakumo) cooks for a baseball playing highschooler (Yamato). I can see this getting some character development unlike Sweetness and Lightening but so far it's just Yakumo cooking meals for Yamato and them going about their individual daily lives. It bills itself as a romantic comedy so I assume they hook up down the line or something. There's no psuedo recipes but the story itself is pretty entertaining with Yamato's insatiable appetite for food and Yakumo trying to keep up.
Kumika no Mikaku
An alien who doesn't need to eat, eats Earth food for the first time and has basically culture and sensory shock at how delicious food is. it's one of the more interesting of recommendations because it's an outsider's perspective on something that is common. There's a chapter where the alien is asked what kind of food she like to eat and she replies the salty kind unaware there are a) other flavors and b) many foods are salty. It also seems to be a romance angle where her senior at the company she works at gives her food and she eventually cooks for him (and the other coworkers). I probably like this one the most because of the art and writing.