Home Cookin Recipe Organizer Features and Screenshots
Easy to Use Interface
Home Cookin uses a simple tabbed interface that is easy to
operate while providing all the features you use most. Within minutes
you will be adding your own recipes, preparing grocery lists, and
planning your meals for the upcoming weeks. Each screen is optimized to
make every operation as effortless as possible, while not getting
bogged down with seldom used options.
You will feel right at home with the familiar style of a traditional
cookbook. You can create as many chapters as you wish, and organize
your recipes into the chapters you want them in. Home Cookin will keep
everything sorted alphabetically so you can quickly browse through your
collection, and find your favorites easily.
All recipes are immediately available in a single collection, so you
can access any recipe instantly without having to load or save
different cookbooks. And with support for over 2 billion recipes,
you'll always have space to add more recipes.
Easy Recipe Entry
Most recipe organizers force you to use a "fill in the blanks"
approach when you add new recipes. This limits flexibility and
complicates recipe entry. Many common recipe conventions such as "2 to
3 cups" are difficult to accommodate and make you reformat the recipe
to fit the programs available fields.
Our recipe organizer uses free-form text entry for easier use and
greater flexibility. When you add or edit a recipe, you just start
typing. No complicated fields, no limits on the length or number of
ingredients, and no restrictive entry rules. Format the recipe as you
wish, check spelling with the built-in spell checker, or resize the
ingredients for any number of servings.
Home Cookin also provides additional support for informational text
such as food glossaries, conversion charts, health recommendations, and
other reference material. There is no need to force this information
into restrictive records intended for recipes.
Photo Support
For even greater flexibility, our recipe organizer lets you
include a photo with each of your recipes. These can be used to show
charts, how-to information, or simply to make your recipe more
appealing.
Pictures can be used by themselves when no recipe text is needed, and
the photo option is invisible for those recipes that have no
pictures.
Import and Export Recipes
Thousands of free recipes can be found on web pages, newsgroups,
and various mailing lists. You can easily add these to your collection
by
importing them into the Home Cookin recipe organizer. Most
standard formats are supported including:
Meal-Master
Mastercook
Big-Oven
Living Cookbook
Now You're Cooking
Cookbook Wizard
From Scratch
From My Kitchen
Recipe Processor
Computer Chef
Recipes that do not adhere to one of
these standard formats can be imported manually, or you can
copy/paste text into the recipe editor for sources that have
complex or unusual formatting.
If you want to share recipes with friends or family, you can
export recipes in a variety of formats including Mastercook
and Meal-Master. You can even email recipes directly from
Home Cookin recipe organizer. |
Search Capabilities
While you can usually find a recipe quickly by browsing through
the index, it is often faster and easier to locate recipes using the
Find feature.
Find recipes by title, ingredients, or directions
Find recipes based on the ingredients you have available
Find recipes with similar ingredients
Exclude recipes you are not interested in
Search all chapters, or just the current chapter
Duplicate Finder
As your recipe collection grows, you may end up with many similar
recipes. This is especially common when importing recipes from public
sources. Recipes may be renamed, ingredients reorganized, or the
directions edited for clarity. But the recipes may otherwise be very
similar.
The duplicate finder performs a statistical analysis of each recipe,
and can locate similar recipes even when words are misspelled,
ingredients or directions are in different orders, or the recipe titles
are different. Once the similar recipes are located, you are given the
opportunity to compare the matches and delete the ones you no longer
want.
Flexible Printing
Home Cookin recipe organizer provides a variety of print formats so you
can take your recipes with you. Print your favorites when you're ready
to prepare them, or make simple cookbooks for your family and
friends.
Print to standard 3x5, 4x6, or 5x8 index cards
Print to individual cards or multiple cards on a single page
Support for precut index card stock (Avery 5388, 5389, 8386, etc.)
Print small booklets
Print letter size pages (8-1/2 x 11) for simple cookbooks
Create PDF Cookbooks
The Save PDF
feature lets you select recipes for a cookbook then save them to a PDF
file on your hard drive. You can print this PDF file, or send it to
friends as an easy way to share your favorite recipes.
For special gifts you can upload the PDF file to a book printer like
lulu.com and have
your cookbook professionally bound. Order as many copies as you need
for friends and family.
See the
Cookbook Tutorial page for more
information.
Meal Planning
The meal calendar makes it easy to plan your upcoming meals.
Locate your desired recipes, then add them to the calendar. Add
personal notes if you plan on eating out, to show holidays or special
occasions, or to reference recipes in other cookbooks. When you are
ready to prepare the meal, you can access or print the recipe quickly
from the meal calendar.
You can plan your meals days, weeks, or years in advance. Arrange meals
by breakfast, lunch, dinner or any other hour of the day, with no
limits on the number of meals each day. If your plans change, you can
easily move the meals to new dates, or copy meals to additional dates
if you have leftovers.
Grocery Management
The Home Cookin grocery manager will make quick work of preparing
your grocery shopping lists. Start a new list, select the items you
need, and print. A cost estimate is calculated as you select each item,
so you'll know ahead of time how much you'll be spending on your
groceries. The printed list is compact and sorted by store and location
to make your shopping trip as easy as possible.
The Find function lets you locate items quickly, and you can easily add
or edit item items when needed. In addition, each item can have a
default quantity so your frequently purchased items are selected
automatically with each new list.
While some recipe organizers generate grocery lists automatically from
selected recipes, you end up with many items in your list that you
already have on hand. Automatic lists also do not account for recipes
in external cookbooks, household items, cold cereals, fruits, and many
other items for which there are no recipes.
Home Cookin recipe organizer avoids these hassles by letting you select
your grocery items manually. Your list contains only the items you
need, and you don't have to remove or disregard ingredients you already
have on hand. You will actually compile your list faster and with more
accuracy than any automatic list.
