‘A Cookbook of One’s Own From the Internet’
"With an investment from CondéNet, the Internet division of Condé Nast Publications, and a partnership arrangement with Epicurious.com, a CondéNet Web site with 25,000 recipes, Mr. Mohsenin has introduced TasteBook.com, a Web site that allows users to create hardcover cookbooks." - New York Times.
The recipe count: Max for $35 is 100 recipes. Veteran surfers, or at least budget-strapped ones, might be better off sticking to E. Hmm. I wonder if any build-it-yourself e-recipe books are available, ideally with printout capability. Certainly recipe programs exist, not just Web sites. In a situation like this, by the way, as with Wikipedia, the usual book metaphors break down; but I’d still consider both Wikipedia and a recipe database to be e-books—the reference variety.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:23 am
funny you should post about this: i was just looking at the tastebook site last week.
i love to cook, and i have subscriptions to sunset and gourmet to fuel my cooking jones. i have been cutting out recipes that we have used and liked from these mags for years now. for awhile i was putting them into a binder, but at two magazines a month plus X-number of recipes saved per magazine means that the recipes come in faster than i find time to snip & organize them that way.
i heard about the tastebook site, and since i am a subscriber of one of the magazines conde nast owns (gourmet), i figured maybe i could copy ‘n’ paste the remaining ones in my stacks from sunset magazine’s site into tastebook, and make a set of books that way. my problem with tastebook comes in at the price, i guess: i have so many recipes i’d need to make several books (at $35 a pop), and their 100-recipe per book limit really puts me off. so i’m back to square one. not sure an electronic version would work in a kitchen, but i’d be willing to try. it’s certainly a more flexible option, since an electronic one would allow growth and reorganizing as needed. but like i say, i’m willing to try it, that’s for sure. i’m tired of my stack of magazines and clippings!
November 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Not ebook related but I’m a fan of http://ifoods.blogspot.com/ especially the video tutorials.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m not much of a cook, mainly due to lack of time rather than lack of interest. However, looking at my recipes I am not sure how an Ebook reader would stand up to the sort of treatment my paper recipes get! Most are covered with generous samples of whatever I was cooking. Perhaps a special “kitchen model” with a washable plastic cover? For the price being charged by CN I would suggest franco buys a cheap scanner and scans all those clippings (plus the personal notes) and makes a truly personal E-cookbook.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:37 am
I copy online recipes, paste them into Open Office, edit them, and store them in my RECIPES file folder, on my home computer. Takes a little time, but I don’t have to worry about storage space. If I’m planning to use a recipe (rather than just contemplate using it some day) I’ll print it out. I keep a binder full of printouts on the kitchen counter. If a recipe doesn’t work, I throw away the printout and delete the recipe from the hard drive. Occasionally I edit the binder and remove recipes I haven’t used in a while.
Why the heck would I want to pay someone to do this for me?