The problem is that learning to cook from online recipes doesn't teach someone who knows nothing about the most basic cookery skills, how to follow the recipe and cook. It provides the ingredients and a shopping list for those that have the basic skills but without them most people that do try often make a hash of it and give up. It's the basic skills that kids no longer learn from watching mum or granny or in my kids case their dad in the kitchen.

If you haven't peeled a potato or sliced onions or fried a piece of meat, fry an egg, boil an egg, use a tin opener, etc then many of the recipes still present obstacles to those without any of even the most basic cooking skills that most reading these threads take for granted.

It seems to me that - in particular all these TV cheffy programmes - that the combined and converging trends to focus on daft osbscure ingredients, an unbalanced focus on perfect presentation but very little basic ( ie Delia Smith) cooking and prep skills discourages most that even give it a try pretty early on. When they produce a poor meal that also looks nothing like the cheffy picture it's to easy to reach back to the complete meal on the supermarket shelf. It's human nature.

To me it is the lack of the most basic skills and now having a whole new generation growing whose parents didn't cook - and so they do not know the joy of real home food and family meals that has all but dissapeared which is causing the vacuum.