Lynne, that is the BEST Mother's Day gift anyone could get.
I am so happy for you that you son could be with you today.
(and what a SUPER hubby you have too. You are a very lucky woman.)

hugs,
Karen

To Lynn, and all of you...

with love, Karen

What a special gift...the presence of your son today! Enjoy every minute of this day together.

I'm no help re: online sites. I use www.epicurious.com and also www.allrecipes.com It's fun to read/modify the recipes. When I find a winner I print it out and add it to my old-fashioned recipe file (a huge box w/ sections for apps/main dishes/sides/desserts....)

lynn...the BEST Mother's Day possible...to have your family together! Knowing you had a great day & of course, wonderful food & love! My day was full of blessings also.

And I can't help you out with cookbook program...I Google when I'm looking for something in particular. Jeanne S.

Lynn,
Wow! So you had the greatest Mother's Day ever. What a wonderful surprise. It was a Hallmark moment, only it was real, not a TV add.

I use Bento (only made for the Mac). Prior to that, I used a couple of different ones, but was not completely sold on either. Neither was very expensive, but I put a lot of time in on entering the recipes and in the end found them just adequate. One of the main problems with the ones I used was that they both contained hundreds of recipes when they were first installed. I DIDN'T WANT ALL THOSE RECIPES. So I first had to delete all of them - one at a time. So watch out for that. All those free recipes were used as a selling point, but for someone my age, who had already acquired a lifetime of recipes, it was just a pain in the behind. At any rate, I'd look for a program that allows you to run off the ingredients, so you can use it for a shopping list. Look for one that has a search engine for the main ingredient, type of dish (entree, soup, etc) and at least another miscellaneous category. (Because sometimes you won't find it under the most logical category, but you know it was your Aunt Gertrude's recipe or some such thing.)

In addition, it's also nice to have a place to insert a picture of the food. I know this sounds silly, but sometimes it's the presentation that is most important (remember Kathleen's stacked pear salad?) or it's the decorated cupcake, not the cupcake's batter, that's the impressive part you want to duplicate.

I've never owned a PC, so can't be of any help in actually pin-pointing a specific program, but these are things to think about when you begin your research.

Thanks for the Mother's Day wish Lynn and I wish the same to you and all Mothers!

How special to be able to see your DS and especially for MD! I can totally relate as one of my sons was in the military and somehow we worry even more about them then. Such a relief when my DS became a civilian.

I don't use a cookbook program but I save recipes from everywhere on the net and save them on a memory stick. In my Recipes folder there are 19 category folders with many recipes in each. It's a system that works fairly well, is simple, and free. My only problem with it is that I don't really want my MacBook on my kitchen island when I cook and also don't want to bother printing out each recipe so have to keep running back and forth from my table where the laptop is.

What a great Mother's Day surprise, Lynn, so nice that he was able to get leave. Those are the things that tug at our heartstrings, huh? ;o)

No help on recipe programs, I still like a printed out copy or the book for reference. If you are mainly wanting your own recipes on it, why not just create your own? Just a thought.

Luvs

I know you had a blessed day, what a wonderful surprise. I don't use a recipe program either. I've found that when I want one of my favorite recipes,(from just about any of my books) I can nearly always find it online on one of the great recipe sites.
Frou

Wonderful surprise Lynn!! It is so great when you can gather your family together under one roof! My favorite days of the year too!
I can't answer your cookbook question, I have boxes of recipes here there and everywhere, and have to hunt through them every time I want something!! If you work out a good program, please let me know what it is so I can be a copycat :^)
Thanks,
J

Lynn, what a wonderful gift. You must have been on cloud 9.
The best gift of all!
Must have been hard for dh to keep it from you!

I don't have any cooking programs, so I am of no help, sorry!

Thanks for all your kind words. It was fun to share my wonderful surprise with you. Typical of young men, my son failed to let me know that, while his plane was leaving early Monday morning, his girlfriend's flight home was not until 5:00 that evening! So, I had to make runs down to the airport in Albuquerque twice in one day . . . and entertain the girlfriend until she left. Yes, he'd invited his new gf to come stay as well. She was very nice, thankfully; an archaeologist that he'd met while still in grad school. Sooooo, I took her out to lunch and then to the beautiful Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, a museum in Albuquerque showcasing the art, artifacts, etc. from all the many pueblos in New Mexico. She loved it. But, I've been catching up on work around here ever since!

As for cookbook computer programs, thanks for your thoughts and ideas on that, too. Yes, on one hand, I do think that I could make up a very basic one myself but, as OA mentioned, a search engine to find specific recipes based on ingredients at hand, sounds so practical. Like you, OA, I'm really not that interested in a lot of new recipes; I have probably over a thousand of my own favs that I'd like to put in and then access. Good point about the ability to add pics, too! My last cookbook program was MasterCook, which was great until it developed it's problems and caused so many computer problems. It had a feature to not only search but, as you start to add an ingredient or cooking term, a short selection pops up to choose from. I quickly got used to this feature and it made adding my recipes so much easier. It also had a spell check with all the gazillion cooking terms and ingredients in it. That was very handy, as well.
I think I'm going to read more on the Living Cookbook program and make a decision today. Gotta run and take out the trash and the dogs now, though.
Lynn

Oh Lynn, what a wonderful day for you. Gotta love our kids, huh? Wish I had more time to comment.

Punk