Cooking From Cookbooks? Passé?

I've been married forty-four and a half (44 1/2) years, and I have quite a collection of cookbooks, diet books and healthfood books. My mother and other relatives used to get me all of the kosher cookbooks they could find mostly during the 1970's. I have a full collection of Adelle Davis books and the then popular Italian, French and Chinese Kosher series that had the crazy Yiddish type food names.

When I planned my kitchen over thirty years ago, I made sure I'd have book shelves for them:

Do you recognize any of the titles there?

I also used to have a small box for index cards on which I copied my favorite recipes or recipes I had gotten from now forgotten sources and people. That was a trick I learned from a friend to keep my cookbooks clean and also kosher for Passover.  But a number of years ago, I threw that out. It was disgustingly dirty and not used much, except for the Hamantasch cookie dough.

In the old pre-internet days, if I was looking for a recipe, I'd pull out a number of cookbooks that could possible contain the sort of recipe I needed. I'd open the index and search and then go page by page sticking little pieces of paper to hold the place, and then I'd read all the options, choosing which to follow or combine.

Now, since I'm a food blogger, I've blogged most of my recipes, so it's just easiest to check my own blog with the help of google. And if I'm looking for a new recipe, or something I haven't blogged, I just "google" with some key words, compare the recipes and cook. I've never been very OCD about following an exact recipe. If you look up things like chocolate cake, meatballs or challah, you'll find such a variety of recipes and instructions...

• Nu, what do you do?
• Do you cook from cookbooks?
• Do you still have your own recipe files?
• Ot do you just buy ready-made or what?