Zarnballentine - I am sorry that you are disappointed by EYB (and I agree with Jane that it is not necessarily for everyone), but what the site does it does extremely well. The features that I love have produced many wonderful and serendipitous results and really opened up my insight into my (comparatively quite modest) cookbook collection. Here's a loosely-organized collection of things I like:
- finding recipes by combination of ingredients (I've got squash and corn overflowing right now and looking for new ideas!).
- finding recipes for odd ingredients (papaya)
Here's a couple of ways that I use EYB:
- finding options for dinner. Many times, I've sat at the office (away from my books), spent 5 minutes flipping through EYB, and come up with something that I wasn't necessarily thinking about making. I'll jot the results on a piece of scrap paper (along with the book titles) and note any ingredients that I might not have on hand. Then when I get home, it just takes another 5 minutes with the books to decide what I'm in the mood to make.
- finding recipes that I wouldn't have thought of - it helps keep cooking interesting. You know there's times when you need the same-old same-old, and there's times you want something a bit different. Yet EYB is not like going to the internet for a recipe; even on a decent site like Epicurious, the search engine is nowhere near as powerful and the results take more time to evaluate since you don't really know anything about the recipe until you read it and perhaps read the reviews. In contrast, with EYB, you get suggestions from books you already know something about and maybe even know very well, so you've already got a framework for selecting a recipe that suits you at that very moment.
- I also enjoy the times when I end up finding a recipe that I wasn't looking for - EYB has sent me to a book or a section of a book that I wouldn't otherwise have been looking it, then I've come across something else that strikes my fancy.
I will agree that there'- other user lists of books and comments on books. I've discovered - and purchased - a few books that other folks have commented on. s some front-end set-up to EYB (since you have to load your books). I have also experienced something of a learning curve on the search engine ("only show"), but once I got the hang of it, I realized how powerful it was. I recommend browsing around in the forum a bit too, looking at the kinds of questions out there.
What else can I say? I'm an EYB fan!