I've recently been searching the forums for a few things, and realized that a few tips on using the Search function might be useful.
Near the top of every page is a blue bar, with "User CP" on the far left, followed by FAQ, Top Posters, Members List, Calendar, New Posts, Search, Quick Links, and Log Out.
If you click on Search, there is a little drop down menu. You can simply type a word or words in the empty box and choose to have the search results in the form of threads (whole topics), or single posts, that include the search term(s). Depending on the word you use, the results could be numerous, so try to choose a more specific, less common term, if possible.
Anyway, if you select your search results to come up as threads, then when you click on each thread, the term you searched will be highlighted in red in any posts in which the term appears. But if it is a very long thread, that might be more reading than you want to do. So you might want to choose to show the search results as individual posts instead.
If you have an idea that what you are looking for is in a particular thread, there is another tool available to you. Choose the thread, and at the top of the thread, you should see Thread Tools, Search This Thread, Rate Thread and Display Modes.
Choose "Search This Thread" and put in your search term. For example, suppose I want to see what recipes, if any, include chicken in the Share A Recipe Here thread. When I choose to search the thread (which contains 160 posts), I search for the term "chicken" and it brings back a result of 14 posts! Much easier than searching through all 160!
Within the general Search option, there is Advanced Search. If you know a thread title contains a specific word, this is a great way to find it among the almost 4000 threads here. In Advanced Search, you can narrow your search to a keyword, and search Titles Only.
If you are savvy and have tagged any threads, you can also search threads by their tags (I'm not that savvy, so maybe somebody else can speak to that in more detail).
I hope this is helpful to someone out there!
Mrs. C