MasterCook and other Culinary Software...

[chiffonade]

I'm considering purchasing the newest MasterCook version. (Actually, Zombiechef wants to get it for me for Christmas! )

This brings me to my question...if you use Culinary software, for recipe maintenance and other culinary information management - be it "professional" standard or home-computer based, what's your preferred software?

I'd like to load all my recipes, etc., ONCE. If I get all my info into MasterCook and find out there is actually another, better culinary software, I'm going to scream.

TIA for any feedback.

[chefboy2160]

Chiffonade , change is one of the three rules of life ( paradox and humor being the others ) . Yes there will be better software in the future but dont stress on it . I have MasterCook Cooking Lite and I am happy with what I can do with it . I have heard of other software but am not familiar with any but this one .

[Foodie Jeff]

MasterCook is a very good program. Sierra has discontinued its website devoted to the software and will no longer develop future versions (v 6.0 is the last) of the program. Technical support for the program will still be available.

I converted my recipes to MasterCook format after my previous software was discontinued and now MasterCook has suffered the same fate.

Apparently recipe program software is not that profitable.

[ziggy]

I use MasterCook and have been pleased with it. For a home cook at least it's quite handy and easy to use.

[bouland]

I tried various software since 1981 for keeping track of recipes -- I have about 1000 that I've personnally tested over the years -- and in the end I've settled on using a page layout program that does indexing. MSWord will work also, but I've had problems with earlier versions after entering about 200 recipes.

I use "Now Your Cooking" it was inexpensive and I sincerely hope will remain useful for a long time. I think it has all the same features as anyother recipe program. I asked about this on another thread (at this site)...maybe looking that up would be helpful too?

[Chefanna]

I really like this new one called www.livingcookbook.com
It is easy to use and has a ton of functions.
Master Cook has gone under and I worry about the future of the tec support and no more new versions.

[alexia]

When you get a cookware computer program, how do you input all your old recipes? I don't think I can face typing them in!

[phatch]

Now You're Cooking, available from www.ffts.com. It's shareware, so you can try it out for 30 days to see if you like it before committing money to it. Buy it once, all upgrades are free. It's been around for years and is likely to remain so.

It's compatible with MMF (MealMaster Format) so many internet cookbooks can be loaded directly into it. MMF is a tagged text format so you can mark up and export your recipes directly into it in files, or by direct entry.

There are some word processor tricks to automate the mark up if you're interested. Works nice.

What I am most interested in is a computer/PDA cookbook. I usually cook with my PDA with me, not my computer. For now, I just have a text file export to my Visor for direct cooking reference.

Phil

[Chefanna]

alexia, The Living Cookbook lets you "capture recipes" by cut and paste. It will let you import from other programs too. I have the same issues but the big one is I wish it would take all my hand written ones, maybe someday I will type alll those in!
You can download a demo and try it I think.

[mudbug]

alexia,

There are software programs which allow you to use a scanner to say for example: scan a recipe out of a magazine and then convert it to text so you can open it in a Word document in text format. If you'd like more info, let us know.

[alexia]

Thanks to you all for the feedback on these programs. I'll be involved in a project for the next month or so, and will explore these possibilities afterwards.

[Athenaeus]

2-3 weeks ago I was wondering about this and I decided to follow Phatch's proposal!
Well this program is amazing!!!!!

I haven't managed to scan my recipes yet but this is definetely my fault.
Amazing software, very friendly to the user.

Thanks Phill

[phatch]

Glad you like it. It's a good program. I use it mostly as an archive right now. Most of my recipes are in my PDA now which is almost always with me. Very handy. Wish ffts made a Palm compatible version so I could synchronize updates and changes with it. It was easy to export my recipes to text and then load those to the Palm so it's not a huge flaw. I guess I better send them some email about it.

Phil

[Isa]

Which version did you get?