I may have written about this before; I can’t recall.  I looked all over for recipe management software that I liked.  I tried a number of free trials.  Nothing really satisfied me – until I stumbled across Living Cookbook.  Now, I don’t even have the upgrade/newest version yet (it came out very shortly after I bought the previous version and I just haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet), but I love this software!  There is a lot of recipe management software out there that has the feel of being designed by computer programmers, but not by cooks.  That is not the case with Living Cookbook.

The interface is fairly intuitive and very easy to use.  The help files are actually helpful (‘though rarely needed for basic functions).  And this software does a lot.  You can sort your recipes into cookbooks and cookbook chapters.  You can export the cookbooks to word-processing software and format and print them.  You can print individual recipes.

Cookbooks or recipes can be imported and exported in every major cookbook file format that I’m aware of – most notably MealMaster and MasterCook, as well as from plain text files and Living Cookbook’s own file format.  Adding cut-and-pasted recipes is very easy with a special tab on the editing pane just for this purpose.  This is a huge factor for me, as I save recipes from the internet all the time!

It doesn’t just handle recipes, though.  Living Cookbook will handle your meal planning and pantry inventory, as well.  You can input your pantry inventory, and the software will know which of your recipes you can cook.  You can select recipes and add them to a meal plan, then print the applicable shopping list.  Did I mention that this software does a lot? lol

The interface is user-friendly, as well, which is something I did not find with most other programs.  “Odd” recipes gave me trouble – like recipes without ingredient lists.  Those are not a problem in Living Cookbook.  If there are no ingredients, simply don’t list any.  If the recipe makes use of another recipe (for instance, if you need a filling recipe for a cake), just link it up.

It can take some fiddling to begin with if you’re going to make use of the inventory/grocery list feature, as you will have to make sure that the software knows what ingredients all count as the same thing (so you don’t, for instance, end up with little bits of tomato paste on your shopping list in four different places because your recipes all call it something different).  But once it’s set up (for instance, it knows that “tomato paste” and “canned tomato paste” are the same thing), you’re good to go!  (And the customer service on the publisher’s forums is excellent.)

Living Cookbook is definitely a bit of software – and a homemaking tool – that works for me!