Living Cookbook Software Review

In The Beginning..

The timing could not be better. My daily trek to the post office netted me a bright shinning CD from the folks at The Living Cookbook. As serendipity would have it, I had just slated time from my desk to try Alton Brown’s recipe for Granola. Priorities being what they are (food first) I dashed into the kitchen, collected the ingredients, and started preparing “breakfast”. Eyeballing the recipe ingredient list gave me more than an inkling that the calorie content might be a whopper. But, I wanted to know the caloric verdict so I could calculate how much of this stuff I could get away with munching without having to plan an extra four hours in the gym (yeah, sure). This is where the new recipe software program comes into the picture.

Ready, Set, Install

The granola whipped together in less than 10 minutes but requires an hour and a quarter to brown. Perfect! That gave me plenty of time to load the CD and see what’s “cooking” with this software (the pun was not intentional, but what the heck). Installation was a breeze. The install program was standard, easy, and uneventful (in a good way). Nothing worse than a software install program that makes you make too many choices about things you are clueless about from the get-go. Ok, install done, double-click on the Living Cooking icon, program opens, no errors WAH HOO! So far so good. A quick look at my display shows me that The Living Cookbook makes very good use of the “tree view” interface. That is where you have a column off on one side of the page that displays the little folders that store all your recipe stuff, and when you click on a folder additional details appear on the right side of the screen.

This Really IS Easy!

Far be it from me to read the help screen so I dive right in. I take a quick browse of the menus. I thought I’d find “new recipe” under file but discovered it on the Actions menu. Click, click, and I have a window open all ready to add Alton’s recipe. The software has every field labeled nicely so it’s pretty obvious what I type where. One of the main features I want is nutritional analysis. I don’t spend a lot of time reading the screen so I try clicking and right clicking things but can’t find how to select my ingredients for my recipe. (I know that the ingredients and their nutritional values have to be tucked away in a database somewhere). That being said, I went ahead and quickly typed in my quantities, the units of measure (cups, tablespoons etc) and the ingredients. What I love about this so far is I can describe my ingredients "my way". For example, if I want to say “1 cup raisins, chopped or 1 cup golden chopped raisins” I can. Most software that that does nutritional analysis makes you pick from an ingredient list and won't let you change the wording. Ok, recipe is entered. I click a tab called “Procedure”, type in my instructions and ZAP, recipe entered.

However, that fateful moment has arrived when I must read the HELP screen to learn how to get my nutritional analysis. Within a couple of minutes I’ve located the proper help screen, familiarized myself with the writer’s terminology for things and within a few more seconds I was “linking” actual ingredients (with all those wonderful predetermined nutritional values) to my very own recipe items.

The Search Was On

The ingredient search was pretty intuitive to use too. Normally the “search” feature could predict what ingredient I wanted to use. In those cases where the software was unsure, I could just browse a category and find what I was looking for. The database includes close to 7000 ingredients so everything I needed was there. One more click on the “update” button of the analysis screen and voile! I was able to enter Alton Brown’s Granola recipe, complete with a detailed analysis of calories, vitamins, minerals, etc EVEN before the granola was out of the oven. I’m impressed!

I Think I Died And Went To Software Heaven

After my immediate needs were taken care of (breakfast and entering my first recipe) I ventured forth to see what else this baby could do. My next task was to add a photograph of my granola. A few snaps with my trusty digital camera, upload to my computer, then, just a few mouse clicks and my recipe is now complete with photograph!

Later, I emailed myself a recipe, scaled Alton’s granola from six servings down to 3, cloned my recipe so I could enter another with just a few edits, exported one to an HTML file so I can post it on our web site, and created the folders for a new personal cookbook complete with 6 chapters. Wow, I should be tired but all that only took 5 minutes!

Review Conclusion: If You Store Recipes You Need This Software

I’ve downloaded and evaluated many recipe software programs and this is the first one I’d actually plunk down cold-hard cash for. The Living Cookbook performs all the basic functions you need for recipe storage and retrieval in a way that makes it really easy for real people (that’s you and me) to use. Even the more advanced tasks take only a few minutes to learn with the aid of the well documented “help” system. So, whether you’re looking for recipe management software for yourself, your upcoming charity cookbook project, or the perfect birthday gift for your favorite recipe junkie, this is the product to buy.

Oh, and by the way, Alton Brown's granola is fantastic! Give the recipe a try too.

Price:  $34.95 (at the time of writing)
Buy: The Living Cookbook (see update below).

Update 2019

Sadly it appears the company has stopped selling their product.  That said it looks like there is a free download of it here. I have not tried the download, can't tell you if it works but for free you may want to give it a try.  I located a 2nd source for it too here.