14 DAY TRIAL // In the age of speed, when all is needed yesterday, does anyone cook anymore, or does the planet live on fast food? Well, some do live on fast food, but most of us still cook. As we're not yet eating fully-dozed pills, what we eat remains an issue. Many people nowadays keep personalized diets, to get thinner, fatter, healthier, smarter, wiser?These personalized diets are conceived by nutritionist and doctors and they are basically lists of does and don'ts. Complicated, one might say. And it's true. A diet means you must not eat certain types of food; you must avoid others, as much as possible, and?.there's broccoli for the rest.
In order not to give up on either the diet or food, in general, one must know how to prepare a large variety of dishes using the ingredients that were recommended. We can't all afford restaurants or personal chefs, so we frequently find ourselves wondering what to cook tomorrow. When out of ideas, people facing this problem go to cooking books. Problem solved? Not quite. You find the perfect dish, except, of course, the dill you're allergic to, the bacon you're not allowed, the salmon you don't have?
Hope arises from least expected: your pc! How come? Well, some very nice programmers thought of us, the nutrition-concerned people, and developed software to help us in the kitchen. Sadly, it can't stir in the pot, but Cooking Aficionado will be your personal chef waiting in your computer to serve you loyally whenever in need.
Cooking Aficionado is a program that lets you record recipes with all the information necessary: name, ingredients, quantities, instructions, time for preparation, time to cook, even a picture showing how the masterpiece-to-be should look.
How is it different from an ordinary cookbook, a piece of newspaper? Can't you also record recipes using simple text editors? Sure you can, but that won't bring much improvement. I feel the most powerful asset this software has is its search ability. You just type the names of the ingredients you have and Cooking Aficionado will tell you what your options are. It will search its records and tell you how to prepare them, how long it will take and even give you a glimpse of what you'll enjoy at the end?in a digital format, naturally.
Your task is also very important. You must feed your personal chef with recipes, as he only knows a few when taken home. Fill in recipe forms with what you usually cook, those recipes your mother wrote on dozens of sheets, newspaper suggestions, whatever comes in hand. You never know where inspiration could lie. Once he'll know enough, Cooking Aficionado will give you the answer to "What can I cook?" in less than a second.
Recipes can be managed in different ways: they can be changed, deleted, shared with others. You can send your favorite recipes by email to you friends in need directly from the program. Just write the address and mark the recipes you want to send?and that's it. Your recipes can also be secured from unfortunate accidents by backing them up in .xml format or exporting them to different safe locations in your computer. They can be saved in plain text format for better printing, if you feel the need to do so. All recipes are grouped after different criteria that you set and you'll be able to access them by category.
As I was saying, the search option is particularly interesting. Instead of trying to remember what ingredients you need to cook a specific dish or wondering how to prepare the fish your boyfriend proudly brought home, type the words and answers will be given. The search can handle expressions, words and even parts of a word. The more specific you are, the better the result. Also, try to give the program as much information as you can. If you only have 10 recipes stored, it won't do you much good searching through them.
The Good
Using Cooking Aficionado for storing your recipes is a very good idea because it gives you easy management, search options, various ways of manipulation and options for back-up and transfer. The interface is very nice (language and color theme options), friendly and easy to use. Information about a recipe can be very complete (it depends on how much details you give), not to mention you can even keep a picture of the dish.
The Bad
Except the fact that it can't take your place in the kitchen, Cooking Aficionado is a very complete and useful piece of software. There is, though, something that needs improvement: its own recipe database. It has an outstanding number of... one recipe. It surely could do better.
The Truth
Cooking Aficionado is a fine and easy to use recipe manager that provides with multiple options for editing, storage and transfer. It's available in both English and Spanish, it supports different color themes and font sizes and the price is fair.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
