When was the Last Time You Bought a Cookbook?

I enjoy cooking.  I'm not bad at it.  I can whip together a number of different dishes using chicken, fish, or vegetarian.  I have perfected a few favorite casseroles, and my specialty, I love to make huge pots of soup.  The soup is the frugal gourmet's dream.  You can take a bunch of left-overs, some inexpensive vegetables, a little salt, maybe some stock, and voila!  You not only have a dish that can stretch many meals, but can be increased in volume with a little more stock if needed.

Anyway, back to cookbooks.  So, in the mid-nineties, I had a modest collection of cookbooks.  More than most early twenties single men, but not a library worth.  I would peruse the cooking section of the bookstore, and pick up favorites if I saw a couple of recipes that sounded irresistable.  The good ones, with color photos, weren't cheap, running twenty bucks or more!

Frankly, I can't remember the last time I bought a cookbook.  The internet has literally rendered cookbooks obsolete.  From foodtv.com to epicurious.com I have everything I need at my fingertips.  Besides, the average cookbook had a few terrific gems, and a bunch of stuff I would never make.  Kind of like buying an album from a band you heard on the radio and said, "Hmmm... sounds like good stuff."

Are there any other products that you feel the internet has rendered completely useless?  Maybe entire industries?  Travel agents are often cited, although they have simply been forced to change their role dramatically.

Comments

[Tim]

Completely useless? Probably postal mail. Unless it's a physical package... But even then you still need the post office for business mail. Hmm...newspaper personal ads. You can just join Myspace or some other social networking site.

Good topic. Nice way to save some money!

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