Ease of Use:  

With strong improvements upon its previous versions, Living Cookbook offers an intuitive, straightforward approach to finding, inputting and planning recipes. With its user-friendly interface, users can accomplish a range of tasks, from simple ones like finding detailed nutritional information for thousands of food items, recipes and ingredients to making grocery lists with fields available to include prices and stores. Best of all, with built-in help menus and an array of editing features, users are never at a loss for assistance and are never incapable of changing or amending recipes where they see fit.

Recipe Manager:  

The recipe manager is divided into 10 different sections, click between the tabs to access each section. You can use Recipe, Ingredients, Procedure, Nutrition, Tips, Reviews, Techniques, Media, Author and Capture. Use this section to add a recipe or edit a recipe after you have made it.  A spell check will ensure everything entered is spelled correctly.

Once you add a recipe, the saved recipe displays all information on one screen, so you don't have to click through several screens to find the information you want. Within that recipe, you can add audio or video clips, photos, hyperlinks to glossary terms, cooking tutorials, help tips on cooking or links to nutritional information. 

Menu Planner:  

In the menu planner section, you can view daily or monthly plans, and each day includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. For each meal, you can select as many recipes as you want. After you're done planning, the software will calculate the nutritional value and create a shopping list. If you have input an inventory of food on hand, Living Cookbook will track supplies based on usage. Caution: good in theory, but who has the time or the ability to record every ingredient consumed in the kitchen? 

Feature Set:  

Living Cookbook recipes come from food manufacturers and food councils. Each recipe is listed by name, cookbook (Quick and Easy comes with the program), category (some are tagged with multiple categories), source, and estimated cost. Preparation time and number of servings are also included in many recipes, making recipe selection even easier.

You can search your recipes a number of different ways–by recipe, ingredients, glossary item, cooking techniques, and calendar data. You can choose to include or exclude recipes with certain ingredients. An advanced search allows you to limit your recipes further by calorie limits, fat limits, carbohydrates, and more. Living Cookbook also supports a wide variety of formats to upload free recipes: Food Data Exchange, MasterCook 4, MasterCook 5/6/7, Meal-Master, MicroKitchen Companion, Pocket Express, Recipe Processor 2000. And, you can email recipes. And, in its 2008 version, Living Cookbook can now import even more recipes.

Bonus Features

• Add your own audio and video clips.
• Take the time and you can customize Living Cookbook to the stores where you shop to give you more accurate estimates.
• 106 cooking technique articles from the recipe providers. The National Fisheries Institute will give you tips on buying fresh fish while the California-Arizona Watermelon Association will teach you how to carve a watermelon vase … no water required to keep your arrangement fresh.

Ease of Installation:  

Living Cookbook installs quickly, can be saved according to customized file paths and has step-by-step instruction to guide users during the installation and afterwards to help them get started.

Help/Support:  

Living Cookbook offers video tutorials and helpful tips, including 500 help pages and 350 illustrations. Moreover, Living Cookbook now offers tutorial videos on their website and step-by-step instructions in the program to help users. Living Cookbook also includes a support forum and a detailed, topically-organized FAQ page on their website. If, after 60 days you are still unsatisfied with the software, Living Cookbook stands behind its money back guarantee and will issue a full refund.

Though the 2005 version of Living Cookbook was excellent in its own right, respectively earning the TopTenREVIEWS’ “Bronze Award." With a robust library, easy to use search features, an intuitive user interface and detailed nutritional information and recipe instruction, Living Cookbook is what most Cookbook & Recipe software programs strive to be, but few ever achieve.