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[Niddhoger]

why am i always the odd one out, i don't understand the dislike for elves

They rarely bring anything worthwhile for trade unless you are low on cloth/forbid all your cloth in the spring.  Sometimes they bring useful war animals but this is rare due to 1) random chance and 2) the biome they come from.  Most of what they bring is wood-only.  To add insult to injury, the best go-to material for barrels and bins (must-have items for every fort that doesn't abuse exploits) are anathema to the hippie tree hugging elves.  THEY can use wood, but no one else can.  Trying to trade them booze, food, or crafts out of (non-grown) wood containers will piss them off and cause them to leave in a self-righteous huff.

To make matters worse, they only ever use wooden arms and armor.  The only threat they pose in combat is their bows.  However... arrows are stopped easily enough by shields.  Since you give up little by losing their caravan, its hard to trade with said caravan (no prepared food barrels/booze barrels/craft bins), and they are push-overs in combat, most see them best served as live combat training dummies.  A... warm up to "real" sieges. 

Did I mention they are filthy industry-hating hippies!?

[PatrikLundell]

And Noddhoger failed to mention that the haughty self righteous hippies come to YOUR fortress and demand that you stop chopping down YOUR trees, including the not-actually-tree-at-all mushroom trees underground. If you don't have magma (yet) and not coal, that can seriously impact your steel production.

Oh, the hippies probably don't wash either, since soap uses ash in its production...

[Aslandus]

And Noddhoger failed to mention that the haughty self righteous hippies come to YOUR fortress and demand that you stop chopping down YOUR trees, including the not-actually-tree-at-all mushroom trees underground. If you don't have magma (yet) and not coal, that can seriously impact your steel production.

Oh, the hippies probably don't wash either, since soap uses ash in its production...

They don't even get offended when you offer them soap, they are so foreign to the concept that they don't understand the implication that they stink...

[Niddhoger]

Oh... and Human/dwarven civilizations will bring you cloth/leather/clothing as well.  The only thing unique they bring is exotic animals.  Dwarves/humans tend to only bring domestic ones... although the most awesome thing elves used to bring (tamed animalmen) was "fixed"  No more Tony the Tigermen mayors claiming that "This for is GRRRRRRREAT!!!" That was 300% of the reason why elves were useful! Sadly Toady had to remove that D:

[Fabulous death bringer]

So what is honestly the point of them now. Like, They are easilly pissed off, no good items to trade, and not good at combat. Is the only reason we have them in the game to has some one to hate durring the off season that we don't have any goblins to hate.

[Niddhoger]

So what is honestly the point of them now. Like, They are easilly pissed off, no good items to trade, and not good at combat. Is the only reason we have them in the game to has some one to hate durring the off season that we don't have any goblins to hate.

Pretty much.  Elf slaughter is the favorite dwarven pastime!

Now... if you settle in an woodless embark you probably will want to keep elves around.  You can buy wooden barrels, crutches, buckets, splints, etc from them.  I don't believe I've seen them bring BEDS, but they can bring logs. 

Some people like to rely on caravans for their cloth.  Skipping right to the cloth removes the steps of growing/spinning/weaving the plant fibers (or breeding/shearing/spinning/weaving the yarn).  So the more cloth you can outright buy, the less you have to crank out yourself.  Elven clothing is also of the same size as dorfs, so you can buy their hippie rope reed vests and hemp trousers. 
The same is true of food- some people like to buy out caravan food to toss in the larder.  Food is far too easy to make in abundance on even tundra maps though... so *shrugs*.  The final answer lies in the exotic animals they bring.  Sometimes you get some cool animals to breed.

If nothing else, gauge what biome they are from on the first two caravans so you can gauge what animals they might can bring.  I've seen them bring grizzly bears and other in-demand animals (WAR GRIZZLIES RAWR!!!!) One fort got me a breeding pair, so I decided the elves could live for the rest of hte fort.  Others buy out lots of cloth for the first few caravans then slaughter them.  Others just straight to the dickery and seize the entire elven caravan's stock of goods from the first visit. 

[Sutremaine]

You could add the appropriate tokens to blood to make it cookable. Or, you could tweak it a little more to make it act like milk -- cook the liquid into a meal, or process it into... blood cheese, I guess. Not sure how it could be inserted seamlessly into an existing fortress.