By: T.K. Flicek
Cookbook? Oh, you mean all those nostalgic looking books sitting in the closets or resting on the shelves of bookcases collecting years of dust.
Wake up and smell the computer processor! With the advancement in technology and the World Wide Web population increasing by the second, it is not much of a surprise to find grandma’s sacred cookbook taking second place to the infamous internet.
From recipe databases (such as Allrecipes.com©) to online culinary education (as seen on FoodNetwork.com©), the limitation of culinary masterpieces are now just a click away. The culinary world has indeed moved into the 21st century.
It is as simple as typing the word ”recipe” into your favorite search engine to find over 500 million pages or the word “cooking” and receiving over 400 million pages. Today you will find websites that contain recipe databases to recipe blogs and simple cooking lessons to online culinary degrees; the possibilities are infinite.
Even one of the most famous cookbooks, Better Homes and Garden Cook Book©, has adapted to the new media by introducing a “Food & Recipe” page to their website, http://www.bhg.com/. Here you will find thousands of kitchen-tested recipes as well as a blog where the consumer can submit their own creations.
Culinary magazine giants, like Bon Appetite© and Gourmet© have also moved into the electronic format to relate to their readers. At http://www.epicurious.com/ you will find a wealth of resources, which include recipes, culinary articles and a community section that allows its members to store recipes, share stories, and even upload their own culinary videos.
The #1 cooking site on the internet is also the #1 cooking broadcast network, Food Network©, http://www.foodnetwork.com/. This website does it all: thousands of recipes, how-to demonstrations for every occasion, personal recipe database, blogs, and culinary education taught by world famous chefs.
The list continues to grow as young and old move into the world of fast pace living. The evolution of the cookbook has indeed arrived. However, has society forgotten the good old-fashioned time honored tradition of the flour-covered cookbook sitting on the counter while spouting out the instructions to grandma? Has the endless resources of information aided the human race to grow or detract from the human quality to commune.
While the individual person continues to increase their time spent “surfing”, remember the good old days where a life long memory developed from a “flour-covered cookbook.”
