I ended up recreating this entire site from scratch. The database was so convoluted that I just couldn't do anything with it. After spending 4 hrs dropping tables, cutting records and cleaning it had gone from 172 database tables to 167 and decided to just start over. I saved out all the tables I wanted (ie, users, menus, categories etc...) and rebuilt Joomla from the beginning and added only the stuff I wanted, inported the tables I neeeded and the rest I did manually. The result was I went from 172 database tables to 97, a huge improvement! The muck in the database came from doing 15 updates during the Joomla 1.0 days, migrating that database to Joomla 1.5 and then proceding to update it another 11 times. Over the course of a couple of years I've also installed countless components, modules and plugins in an attempt to add the functionality that I needed. Most of these I've eventually uninstalled. For the record I've purchased over $200 in software for Joomla and I'm currently using $7 worth. So much for looking to the commercial Joomla developer for great software.

 

To make a long story short it's now running 100% in a test site and after doing a couple more things I'll be rolling it out for production. I'd look for it tomorrow or the next day. Maybe sooner if I get to it. Once that happens recipes and reviews will be back up and I'll be able to start adding content at a faster pace than I have. Not having recipes and reviews has really slowed down this site.