Living Cookbook Reviewer's Comments

Living Cookbook, the “TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award” winner, is a comprehensive cookbook and recipe organizing program with emphasis on nutritional analysis. Its language is technical, but you will be able to accomplish just about anything when it comes to archiving recipes. 

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Ease of Use:  

Navigating Living Cookbook is straightforward; it uses Windows expand architecture to list the functions. This is not particularly user friendly—you’ll see terms like navigator and task control—unless you appreciate computer programming more than cooking. Start with the Launchpad. Once you are in a task window, remember … you can always click the Launchpad icon on the tool bar for help.

Tip: To add a recipe, you must add a cookbook and corresponding chapter first. Think ahead to decide what organizational structure will work best for you. 

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 would be helpful, but are only included within the recipe, if at all.

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 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.

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:  

This is a 30 second process: no problems. 

Help/Support:  

Living Cookbook offers video tutorials and helpful tips, including 500 help pages and 350 illustrations. They also offer a support forum where questions are answered within six hours. Living Cookbook offers a money back guarantee so if you are not completely satisfied with the product, return it within 60 days for a full refund. 

Summary:  

This is a well-designed program. It’s not pretty, it’s not friendly, but it works. Computer expert & cook? This is for you. Buy it for the features: nutritional analysis, ability to add audio and video, and the comprehensive customization within a recipe.