I just use my regular word processing software. In fact, DS went to vocational school for baking and pastry. I asked his chef instructor what he would recomend. He told me to use the word processing software I already have! So that's what I do!

Tami

I've been using Home Cookin Software for a number of years now. I tried a number of others but this one was the one that I liked the best.

I'm with Ann and use Home Cook'n and love it. Support is wonderful too.

Michelle

Thanks for the feedback. That software is only available for PCs and I'm on a Mac. But I think I found one that will work for me - MacGourmet.

They have a 20 day trial that I downloaded and so far it looks like it has everything I need! So I'll probably be buying it. I'm so looking forward to get my paper recipes organized online so I can find what I need when I need it!

Bonnie

Whatever software you use, make sure you make back-ups of your recipes... Nothing worse than getting all your recipes on the computer and having it die on you...

Rita

ditto the backup....
Also, tuck all those pieces of paper into an envelope until you're sure you copied everything accurately. It's real easy to skip an ingredient, particularly when you're inputting a a number of recipes.

Thanks for the tip. I back up regularly as I have well over 1000 songs in my iTunes libray (I'm a Jazzercise instructor).

I'll also be keeping the recipes on 2 computers, my desktop (upstairs) and my laptop which I keep near my kitchen.

Now to find the time to get started! LOL

Bonnie

Another issue with back up - years and years ago I had a recipe collection on a computer. But when I upgraded, all of my backups were on the wrong size of floppy disk! (Anyone remember 5-1/4" floppies?) My new machine didn't take that size floppy and that size was pretty well "gone" too. So I lost all of those recipes that I hadn't printed out yet.

I used to use a form of QBook - Quick Book? - doubtful that it's even made any more.

DonnaR/CA

I have MacGourmet, but so far have not put many of my forum recipes into it. Lots of them are still in Word documents.
Gotta get busy.

bons & cloudy - I also have a Mac - I am interested in your opinions of the MacGourmet. Also, slightly OT - I am struggling with a new external drive for backing up - Acomdata miniPal - do you have any recommendations for a better drive?

I use an OWC Neptune hard drive. It's not a mini or travel drive, but it's not physically big. It uses a Firewire connection, which is really fast. Probably can get it with USB as well.

Very easy to use - I connect it to my Mac, and drag the data I want to back up to the drive.

Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: OWC Neptune Backup Hard Drive

I just use Microsoft Word or Adobe. I copy and paste recipes from the forums and save them as a word document to two computers. I have a wireless network, so it's easy to save to both computers. I can also paste pictures that people post into the recipe I save, so I have a good idea of what I'm aiming for (not that I often get there).

If the recipe is already in a good format, I print it as a PDF file and save it to both computers. The nice thing is that I can search by name or by a word in the files, so it's never hard to find a recipe to try.

I've tried recipe programs and even created on in Microsoft Access, but they all involve retyping a recipe into the program. Copy and paste is so much easier.

If I need to, I'll print the recipe and I have a small folder in my kitchen of frequently used recipes, otherwise, they stay on the computer. They sure don't take up much space, and when I go to Texas to visit my daughter, I copy the file to a jump drive and then I can update her recipe file, too.

I use MS Word.

I still end up with dozens and dozens of recipes written down on various sizes of paper scraps, most without titles, most done in a very brief short hand, and all stuffed into the drawer where I keep the phone book....

More than once I've had to actually make the recipe on the paper to figure out what it was! I knew when I wrote it down, but after some months of swimming in the drawer...

Momj47 -

MacGourmet does not require you to retype recipes you already have on the computer in other programs, or ones that you want to save from the various recipe websites.

I only have the trial version of MacGourmet, but I tested it with a recipe from allrecipes.com that I was easily able to copy and paste following the instructions in MacGourmet.

Some of my older recipes that I only have on paper I will have to retype, but I do have tons that I have access to online or on my computer.

I suspect most of the other Recipe programs out there these days also offer a way to copy and paste.

Bonnie

I just came across this post about mac recipe programs. I just wanted to put in my 2 cents.

We have 2 macs in the house (mini and older powerbook.) I was just buggin DH for recipe software.

I just downloaded the trials for both MacGourmet and Yummy Soup (i know the name is silly.) But I thought Yummy Soup was much better with almost all the features as MG or more. I thought the Yummy Soup one was going to be more "low budget" but it is sooo much better than MG.

You are able to view the recipes by picture as well. There is also a better web importer from any recipe boxes you have on most cooking sites. You can drag the website link into the program and it fills in all information including images. As well as a text clipping import similar to that of MG. YS also has a better "chef view" for those kitchen laptops. It has a nice look to it.

The user interface I found to be better looking (except the icon - a manatee eating soup..) but if thats all that bothers me its not so bad - even cute at times.

Yummy Soup is constantly updating and has a great forum that the creator reads and take all your input. There are many features that will be added in the next versions including shared databases for multiple computers and I think multiple users on one computer.

Please try it - it is great and at only $20 well worth it. I am so glad that I tried both. I wasn;t expecting YS to be as good as it was.

Let me know what you think!
Ruth

Here is a link that might be useful: Yummy Soup Mac Recipe Software

Hmmmm. I never heard of Yummy Soup - it didn't come up in any of my searches for Mac Recipe software. I will definitely download the trial and check it out.

Thanks,

Bonnie

I use Mastercook and like it. I think quite a few here use that one also. However, the new Microsoft Office 2007 has One Note, which looks pretty intriguing and allows you quite a bit of freedom while giving you fre reign to organize any way that you like. I may try that.
Sherry

bonnie - it is worth a try.. its pretty good. DH found something that was a software contest and someone won with a recipe program, but he has no idea if and when it will ever come out. He did the search and said he thought I should choose between the two. Like I said - this one looked like a lower end program b/c I couldn't find much about it - but after researching more and reading the forums on the software website I found that it was the best choice.

Hopefully you will like it.

Ruth

Ruth, someone on the YummySoup forums asked if you can search by ingredients. I couldn't find an answer. Can you?
That's one of the greatest benefits of recipe software for me -- being able to see all my recipes containing dill, for example.

Also, recipes aren't scalable, and the developer says that's not a priority.

Still, if importing is significantly easier, I might use it to bring in my recipes from the web, and then move them to MacGourmet. They can open each other's files.

OK - just downloaded it and imported a recipe from Allrecipes.com. Once I figured out how to do that, it does work better than MacGourmet because it imports the ingredients and directions cleanly and already formatted just by dragging the URL.

However scalability is important too. Also, I need to know if I can keep it on 2 computers (my kitchen laptop and my desktop), which you can do with MacGourmet.

Hmmmm... I may end up with 2 applications like Christine!

Bonnie

ok... I am still learning - just started using the program a few days ago - but here it goes..

Ingredient searches - You can't do a regular search but you can create a new smart group and add ingredient predicates. You can even have it show you recipes that don't contain certain items. Say you want a chocolate cake without nuts or oil. Taken from the helpbook howto:

To add a smart group:

Click on the + button under the table of groups
Name your new group
Change the type of group to Smart Group and press Create
Take a look at the various items you can base your smart group on
Use the + and - buttons to add and remove search criteria
Press the OK button when you are done
Click and drag your new smart group to the location you would prefer. NOTE: You can also drop a smart group into another group, but not into other smart groups.

Scaling Recipes - This is not a feature as of yet. But according to the developer it should be in the 1.7 release and that should hopefully be coming next month. See the link below to the request for it. The original request was in November and he posted this month that it will hopefully be in the next major release 1.7 by the end of this month.

Multiple Computers - It is a family license - so it can be installed on any computer in the house. The only thing that I am not sure of is if there is a way to share the recipes in your library over the network. I read that the database sharing will be in the next release as well. He posted on 2/9 that he is finalizing the details of it and should be out soon.

The developer is constantly taking feature requests and bug reports from the consumers and is always posting on the forums there. It seems that there are updates quite frequently to keep adding to the product. From what I can see - all updates are free - as of yet - and if you have a trial going on when an update comes out - he resets your trial back to 15 days.

Hopefully you guys like this program as much as I do. I think that the updates are so frequent and really make a difference. Hopefully after some of these features are implemented and you use the Yummy Soup interface you will like it better than MG. I really found the program a lot easier than MG.

Ruth

Here is a link that might be useful: Feature Request post on scaling

Here is the post on database sharing from the Yummy forums.

Here is a link that might be useful: Database sharing post

In MacGourmet you can say, "I have dill and mushrooms but no onions," and see the recipes that use what you've got.

I think that you can do the same with a smart list. I am not sure how many items you can search for. I'll try it out tomorrow.

Updates anyone? I just got a Mac and am looking for Recipe Management software endorsed by those that use them.

So MacGourmet or Yummy Soup?

I'm the OP, and I am now using YummySoup exclusively and loving it.

FWIW - There is a definite lacking in explanations/help on how to use this software, but once I figured it out - it was simple and quick to use, and has some great features.

If you need help you can ask on their online forums (on the Help menu).

Bonnie

bons

thanks for the reply. One quick question as I was looking over both earlier this afternoon and was actually leaning towards MacGourmet Deluxe as it seems you can import recipes from document files and most of my recipes are saved that way. Is it possible to do that in Yummy Soup?

I don't know if there is a way to import a recipe from a document as a whole. The way I do it from my Word documents is to select a section of the recipe at a time, and drag it into the appropriate section of the recipe template in Yummy groups. It automatically reformats the ingredient list into the proper columns. It keeps numbered steps as numbered steps. I assume you have the 'test' version of Yummy. Try it with your documents and see if it works for you.

It takes less than a minute per recipe.

Bonnie

Thank you. I did download the test. Off to try this. MasterCook is painful to use this way - so I'm hoping for better luck with either Yummy Soup (cheaper so IMO worth putting a little more effort into) or MacG.

We are a mixed household. I use a cast off Mac and a cast off desktop PC. I have recipes on both computers, but the MAC lives in my kitchen. I have a Recipe Zaar membership and transfer recipes from GW to my private cookbook. The online availability is nice for any computer I use and won't get lost in a hard drive crash. I like being able to access recipes from my parents kitchen, too. Looking at the demo page on the Yummy Soup website there is an online library. Would that work for both computers or is it just MAC?

Yes - Yummy Soup has an online libray that anyone can post recipes to, I believe.

No - it's only available for the Mac.

Bonnie

I have a question about general use of the Home Cooking software program for recipes. My thought about the software is that if I use the software, I wouldn't have to have hard copies of recipes taking up space in binders, etc in the kitchen. But, I'm thinking that unless you have a computer in the kitchen that you end up printing out a copy of the recipe anyway?

Tell me I'm not thinking about this correctly. :)
Thanks!
Pam

Yes - that's probably true. I found that I had so many recipes on scraps of paper or printed out that even though I have them in a binder by category, it took me forever to find what I was looking for (i.e. no table of contents).

I have a laptop that I use in my kitchen. Yummy Soup (and maybe other programs) allows you to display the recipe full screen in fairly large print, so it's really easy to use from the screen. It's perfect for a laptop.

Bonnie

Bonnie

Aha, bons, I think you're right! A laptop would be the answer. I'll have to stick with my binders for now. Thanks!
Pam