BigOven Deluxe Inspired Cooking Reviewer's Comments
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“TopTen REVIEWS’ Gold Award” winner, BigOven Deluxe Inspired Cooking is the only cookbook and recipe organizing program reviewed to integrate software with a dynamic online site BigOven.com. Recipe boxes, menu planning, nutritional analysis, and grocery lists combine with 55,000 participating cooks and 160,000 recipes. The interface is seamless.
BigOven Deluxe Inspired Cooking Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Ease of Use:
Do not be alarmed by the Getting Started tutorial. It is intimidating; it speaks to the computer programmer, not the cook. However, the program is intuitive and easy-to-use. Explore on your own, and refer to the tutorial if you get stuck.
BigOven uses virtual recipes boxes instead of cookbooks. The program comes with six recipe boxes:
- Crockpot
- Grains
- Lo-Carb
- Mixed Drinks
- Standard
- Weightwatchers
With a click, switch from Recipe Boxes to Cuisines, Main Ingredients or Course. You can move recipes from box to box with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature.Email function requires setting up outgoing email (SMTP), not information most people have at their fingertips. Work around: Copy and paste into an email. However, the email works without initializing on the website.
Tip: Don’t look for the save button when you are adding or editing, BigOven Inspired Cooking saves as you go.
Recipe Manager:
You can edit any recipe in your recipe boxes and create new recipes four ways:
- Type in your recipe
- Search BigOven’s Archive and import from BigOven.com
- Import any recipe in the MealMaster, MasterCook or Cook'n format.
- Capture the text from any word document, text file or HTML screen and import the recipe into BigOven Deluxe.
Other useful features in the recipe manager include scaling the ingredients to fit the number of servings you need, rating each recipe by taste, look, difficulty level, and its cost.
Menu Planner:
The BigOven Deluxe Inspired Cooking meal planner is easy to use. Simply click on the calendar to create a meal plan for that day. The screen has four areas: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks/other. Drag and drop the recipes for each meal. Add notes like lo-cal day or birthday.Shopping lists are just as easy to create. Drag a recipe to the shopping list and it will automatically create the list for you. It even arranges the items by aisle to make shopping quick and easy. There is a combine feature, but it did not seem to work the way it should. For example, an egg yolk and an egg should be combined to make two eggs. If you want the nutritional facts for each recipe, you must link the ingredient lines with the USDA nutritional database that is supplied. You'll have to do this for each new recipe.
Feature Set:
Recipes come from users and many of the recipes are rated, but check the number of ratings to get a more accurate sense of popularity. The BigOven online recipe archive is a good resource, especially when you are looking for an obscure recipe.
The search function is user-friendly and you can search by keywords, rating, title and ingredients. You can't narrow your search by excluding ingredients. A unit converter function will convert Celsius to Fahrenheit—useful for recipes that are from other parts of the world. Post original or revised recipes to your own website, BigOven.com or a mobile device.
Bonus Features
Adding keywords is especially easy. Take the time, future searches will be more effective. You’ll be able to remember what your mother-in-law liked, and what she hated. You can even mark some keywords private so when you share a recipe only the public keywords appear. To add keywords, use the checklist of 58 keywords organized by:
- Course/Dish
- Preparation Method
- Season/Occasion
- Special Considerations
- Other (several choices and as many additional keywords as you’d like)
Use Leftover Wizard to get ideas for turning your leftovers into another meal. Input up to three items and get recipes that use them.
Idea Wizard will generate recipes based on the ingredient you enter and can filter by special considerations like kid friendly and easy.
Take it on the road: BigOven can be loaded on a Windows mobile smart phone. Forget slips of paper—the grocery list is on your phone.
Ease of Installation:
No difficulties while installing BigOven Deluxe.
Help/Support:
BigOven Deluxe comes with a Getting Started Guide. The program itself is much easier to use than the guide indicates. A complete help document is included with the program, use the online FAQs page, Message Board, or contact through email.
Summary:
BigOven Deluxe Inspired Cooking is the only cookbook and recipe organizer software to link to an online recipe archive that is constantly expanding. The program offers all of the features to inventory your own collection and gives you access to recipes from thousands of home cooks. Printing options are limited, but if you’re looking for recipes and meal management this is the one. Here is a program for cooks, beginner to expert, complete with more search functions and recipes than any other software.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
