Cookbook/ Recipe Organizing Software

I looked at the MasterCook Program and am not sure that's what I want. Though some of the reviews on Amazon were glowing and positive if you click through to the 1-3 star reviews you see that it's hit or miss.

I really just want to be able to organize my own recipes. I'd rather not pay a ton of money for a meat-and dairy filled recipe collection that I'm never going to use. All the programs I've seen boast huge recipe collections already installed and, like you Shamandura, I have hundreds of my own.

I've been diligently cutting down food waste and find the best way to do that is to meticulously meal-plan. I hate grocery shopping so I try and get in and out of there as quickly as possible. Having all my ingredients written out and grouped by areas in the grocery store is the best way to go for me. Plus, when I open the cabinets and stare blankly at the contents not knowing what to make I just glance at my "meals" list and pick something from that. I just wish I could find a blank program that fit this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael

I've thought about using recipe software but it just doesn't seem very convenient. Do you print the recipes out anyway when you go to make them? Write them down? Do you take a laptop into the kitchen?

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Sometimes I print them but usually I just jot down the basics on an index card and slip it in a sheet protector thing. I really want it for meal-planning and grocery shopping. But I hear what you're sayin about convenience

I use Living Cookbook - http://www.livingcookbook.com/

You can download a free trial and if you decide to buy it's $30. I needed a place to organize all of my online recipes and the ones I had lying around on scrap pieces of paper. You can upload photos of the recipes which I like, and organize the recipes by "cookbooks". For example I have a bread cookbook, a pasta cookbook, etc. You can search for recipes by ingredients or recipe type (e.g., soup, main dish, side dish, etc.).

If you really want to get involved you can also keep track of your pantry items and create grocery shopping lists. If you update your pantry items it will tell you what things you already have and what things you need to buy (I haven't really gotten around to taking stock of my pantry yet though). You can even add in the price of ingredients and it will calculate how much each serving of a meal costs. There is also a calendar feature so that you can plan menus.

Okay so I'll stop my raves now. The reason I got this one is because I liked it once I used the free trial and $30 didn't seem ridiculous to me. It was a lot better than the freeware programs I had tried (don't really remember any names of the top of my head).

Oh I also forgot to add that if you have a list of your pantry items, you can also search for recipes you can make without buying anything new.

Wow, after all this raving I'm motivated to finally take stock of my pantry and use these features.

Ooo all good ideas! Thank you both!

I swear I spent like 3 hours looking stuff up and I finally decided to go with this:

http://www.supershareware.com/info/c...organizer.html

It was free and got some good reviews on other sites. I fiddeled with it last night for awhile and started putting in recipes and deleting the meat/dairy stuff. What was neat about that was that it only came with about 300 recipes and even had a vegetarian section as well as Indian, smoothies, juicing, and agave sections. That was kinda cool though a lot still had to be deleted like the Betty Crocker sections.

It's not the "prettiest" software (it's very basic looking) but it's super easy to use, has fairly accurate nutritional analysis, grocery lists, menus, monthly planners, and everything is customizeable. Did I mention it was free lol? So I may have solved my issue, I'll have to use it for awhile and see how I like it.

My idea was to create an iBook. I'm a Mac user and you can type (or copy and paste stuff) in Pages and then with a menu command turn it into an iBook that can be read on an iPad. which can stand up in your kitchen. Also, you can send you iBook to your friends and they can read it on any device capable of displaying an epub file.

I think this was a good plan but like a lot of stuff I do, I fell behind and gave it up.

Recently i have some health issues and have been using Cronometer religiously. I discovered the "recipe" feature and anytime I make something with more than 4 ingredients I turn it into a recipe. The number one cool thing is that Cronometer automatically gives you all the nutritional info. Number two cool thing is that you can add the directions into the "notes" section".

also, all your recipes are pretty easy to find. You can even "tag" your recipes. I might want to do some thinking ahead about names and tags. But so far I like it and have cronometer on my MacBook and my iPhone.

It doesn't make grocery lists but I have an old app called Grocery Gadget that I really like