One of my followers, Rick, has this really cool website featuring everything Guy Fieri (and everything Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives too!). He has most (maybe all) of the restaurants listed by state with contact info, directions, and customer reviews of each. This is a great site if you want to check some of them out!

If you are in dire need of a pair of shades like Guy wears or just want to check it out, go to flavortownusa.com.

Now its time to get back to testing.

Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

At www.SaugaWebDesign.com, I try to describe in an easy step by step process, what you need to do to setup a professional looking blog.

Topics will include: choosing and setting up your web hosting, WordPress setup, Marketing advice, and helpful tips and resources.

I hope that you will visit www.saugawebdesign.com and hopefully you will find it helpful.

Enjoy,
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Please come back and visit this blog in 2010. I am planning on reviewing Cook’n by DVO in early January.

Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

 Cost:

BigOven Deluxe is $29.95 for the download version and another $10.00 if you want a CD version. It has a 30 day free trial also. If you are interested, I suggest that you click here and click “Try” to download the trial to test it out for yourself. Read my complete review for a way to purchase BigOven Deluxe recipe software for only $26.95!

System:

BigOven Deluxe recipe software states that it works on all Windows systems (including Windows 7). There are even apps for iPhone, Windows mobile, and Palm OS…
There is a backup option…

Support:

There is no phone or chat-line support. There is email support, which I tried and got a fairly quick response…

Usability:

BigOven Deluxe is windows standard and the GUI is very user friendly. There are easy to understand icons and the setup is pretty easy to navigate.

It was easy to add a photo to either a new or an existing recipe…

Using the category listing to the left made narrowing down recipes easy…

There is an extensive search feature that allows you to search the open recipe box, or all the recipe boxes that you have, or all of them plus recipes on the website…
 
This recipe organizer software has an online help tool with search and index capability. The help tool seems quite useful…

Recipes can be printed in full page layout, 3×5 or 4×6 card format…

There were a couple of usability aspects that I thought could be improved…

Recipes:

There are approximately 8000 recipes provided in 6 recipe boxes (one of them has 1000 drink recipes). There are also over 170,000 recipes on the BigOven.com website. It was reasonably easy to download a recipe box, however…

The quality of the provided recipes seem fairly good…
 
Adding your own recipe from an online source is easy enough…

The system also provides you with a way to enter comments, a short description (that appears up near the top under the title), whether you would make this again, ratings (for taste, appearance, difficulty, and cost), and tags (keyword names)…

Other features

 How to videos:

There are quite a few, good quality, how to videos…

Nutritional breakdown:

Nutritional breakdown of recipes is provided..
For info on the rest of the features, please see the complete review.

As I mentioned above, for a complete recipe software review of BigOven Deluxe, simply subscribe to the RecipeSoftwareGuide.com’s free newsletter (for an example of a complete review, see Now You’re cookin 5.86 Review).

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Unfortunately, it is taking longer than expected to complete the recipe software review. Please check back early in the week and hopefully I will have something posted.

If you would rather, please subscribe to my email newsletter and you will be notified when it is finished.

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Today, Recipe Software Guide is taking a look at the 5 best cookbook gift ideas for Christmas 2009!
(Excerpts taken from Amazon.com)

Canadians please visit my Amazon.ca store, provided by Amazon.ca, to order.

1) The Pioneer Woman Cooks

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl(Ree Drummond)

My name is Ree. Some folks know me as The Pioneer Woman.

After years of living in Los Angeles, I made a pit stop in my hometown in Oklahoma on the way to a new, exciting life in Chicago. It was during my stay at home that I met Marlboro Man, a mysterious cowboy with steely blue eyes and a muscular, work-honed body. A strict vegetarian, I fell hard and fast, and before I knew it we were married and living on his ranch in the middle of nowhere, taking care of animals, and managing a brood of four young children. I had no idea how I’d wound up there, but I knew it was exactly where I belonged.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks is a homespun collection of photography, rural stories, and scrumptious recipes that have defined my experience in the country. I share many of the delicious cowboy-tested recipes I’ve learned to make during my years as an accidental ranch wife—including Rib-Eye Steak with Whiskey Cream Sauce, Lasagna, Fried Chicken, Patsy’s Blackberry Cobbler, and Cinnamon Rolls—not to mention several “cowgirl-friendly” dishes, such as Sherried Tomato Soup, Olive Cheese Bread, and Creme Brulee. I show my recipes in full color, step-by-step detail, so it’s as easy as pie to follow along.

You’ll also find colorful images of rural life: cows, horses, country kids, and plenty of chaps-wearing cowboys.

I hope you get a kick out of this book of mine. I hope it makes you smile. I hope the recipes bring you recognition, accolades, and marriage proposals. And I hope it encourages even the most harried urban cook to slow down, relish the joys of family, nature, and great food, and enjoy life.

2) Good Eats

Good Eats: The Early Years (Alton Brown)

Alton Brown is a foodie phenomenon: a great cook, a very funny guy, and—underneath it all—a science geek who’s as interested in the chemistry of cooking as he is in eating. (Well, almost.) Here, finally, are the books that Brown’s legion of fans have been salivating for—two volumes that together will provide an unexpurgated record of his long-running, award-winning Food Network TV series, Good Eats.

From “Pork Fiction” (on baby back ribs), to “Citizen Cane” (on caramel sauce), to “Oat Cuisine” (on oatmeal), every hilarious episode is represented. Each book—the second will be published in fall 2010—is illustrated with behind-the-scenes photos taken on the Good Eats set. Each contains more than 140 recipes and more than 1,000 photographs and illustrations, along with explanations of techniques, lots of food-science information (of course!), and more food puns, food jokes, and food trivia than you can shake a wooden spoon at.

3) The Conscious Cook

The Conscious Cook: Delicious Meatless Recipes That Will Change the Way You Eat (Tal Ronnen)

A former steak lover himself, Chef Tal struggled for years on a vegan diet that left him hungry and filled with cravings for butter and meat. By applying traditional French culinary techniques to meatless cuisine, he found that he could gratify his cravings for rich flavor and fat.

The Conscious Cook shows readers that avoiding the health risks and ethical dilemmas of eating meat and dairy does not mean sacrificing taste and appetite. This is not a cookbook of sprouts and tofu burgers, but of mouth-watering, hearty meals that keep the protein at the center of your plate. Featuring 75 original recipes that will satisfy the fussiest foodies and the most dedicated of carnivores, The Conscious Cook is a breakthrough in meatless cuisine that will revolutionize the way readers experience food.

4) More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: A Drop-Top Culinary Cruise Through America’s Finest and Funkiest Joints (Guy Fieri)

Join New York Times bestselling author and Food Network star Guy Fieri for a second helping of the best diners, drive-ins, and dives across America!Guy Fieri strikes again with More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, giving you a road map to road food that’s earned its culinary citizenship in “Flavortown.” Join Guy on a cross-country noshing parade, mapping out the best places you’ve never heard of-more than fifty establishments off the beaten path. Compete in a (no hands) apple-pie-eating contest at Bobo Drive-In in Topeka, Kansas, dip your taste buds in Sweet Spicy Love sauce at Uncle Lou’s Fried Chicken in Memphis, Tennessee, and get a load of the killer four-cheese mac-and-cheese at Gorilla Barbeque in Pacifica, California.

Filled with Guy’s hilarious voice and rampant enthusiasm for these hidden culinary gems, More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is the perfect book for lovers of the American food scene and fans of Triple D.

Also available is his first: Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . with Recipes! (Food Network)

5) Ace of Cakes

Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes (Duff Goldman)

When Duff Goldman, Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes,” envisioned Charm City Cakes in Baltimore nearly a decade ago, his goal was to make wonderful cakes for friends and family. As word spread about his fabulous creations, his dream grew into a nationally renowned business staffed by a team of talented professionals, including musicians, artists, and creative souls with experience in architectural modeling, graphic design, deejaying, coffee making, performance art, dog walking, sculpture, painting and more.

Aces of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes is a celebration of the bakery that started it all. This colorful scrapbook is loaded with stories about Duff’s early days as a graffiti artist turned young chef, his successes and hilarious disasters, and the amazing team he built step-by-step. Through candid interviews and profiles and hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and collages, the book shows how energy, inspiration, collaboration, and a bit of luck can conspire to help anyone achieve their creative vision.

Of course, at the center of this stunning book are Charm City’s Cakes. From the simple to the breathtakingly complex, Duff shows off some of the bakery’s more unusual techniques and tools that shape their famous creations. He also offers a behind-the-scenes look at his Food Network show, shares his most incredible customer stories and requests, and reveals some of the bakery’s favorite cake facts and tips–along with a comprehensive episode guide and a monster cake montage featuring seven years’ worth of the bakery’s astonishing cake creations.

Well, hopefully this post will help you cross someone off of your gift buying list!

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Cost:

RecipeMaster 2.0.2 is free recipe software. On the about page, the developer has a donation box if you like the free recipe program and would like to donate something to its upkeep.

System:

RecipeMaster recipe software states that it works on Windows(2000 and XP). With one small fix it seems to work fine (with the one exception that the online help doesn’t work) on Windows Vista as well.
There is no Mac version and no mention of support for Windows 7 (as far as I could tell).
I tested using XP Professional and Vista Professional.
Approx 13MB download that install easily.
There was no mention about how to backup your recipes…

Support:

There is no phone or chat-line support. Email is the only support option. It seems like the software developer is the only person on support, so response could likely be delayed at times (example holidays). It also leaves a larger concern that if this person leaves this business, there will likely be no support or upgrades.

Usability:

The GUI seems quite friendly and Windows like…

Using the category listing to the left made narrowing down recipes fairly easy…

Searching for recipes was a little more difficult…

Recipes:

There are 2715 recipes provided…

As I mentioned above, for a complete recipe software review of RecipeMaster 2.0.2, simply subscribe to the RecipeSoftwareGuide.com’s free newsletter (for an example of a complete review, see Now You’re cookin 5.86 Review).

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Simply, subscribe to my email newsletter and I will send you this informative three page guide absolutely free. On top of that, I will periodically update you when more recipe software programs have been reviewed.

Privacy guaranteed, I will definately not forward your email and no spam! Just a brief email (at most once a week) that highlight reviews.

So, once again, to receive this informative guide absolutely free, just sign up for my email newsletter.

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Kitchen Wall Calendar

Today, Recipe Software Guide is taking a break from doing recipe software reviews and bringing you a reminder about 2010 (as if you need one), plus a cool site with a great deal on calendars.

Calendars.com has a three day sale (20% off, plus free shipping for orders over $20, with coupon provided below). This is a great site with hundreds of calendars of all kinds. There are lots of selections of wall and desk calendars in their Food and Drink category, as well as over 30 kitchen towel calendars to choose from.

Kitchen Towel Calendar

The three day sale is on until Oct 30, 2009. Get 20% Off any order at Calendars.com and free shipping with $20 purchaseand use coupon code AF1009FS2 when ordering. (After Oct 31st, its 15% off and free shipping for orders over $20 with coupon code: CJ1010)

Recipe Desk Calendar

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Cost:

• $30.00 for download with 16 recipes, this also includes future upgrades and access to their website to download and import 700 plus zipped files with more than 100,000 recipes (I saw something in their FAQ, I think, that said 300,000 plus recipes, either way there’s a few out there).
• $41.00 gets you the above in CD format plus a manual.

System:

• Now You’re Cooking recipe software program works on Windows(95, NT4, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and 7). There is no Mac version. I tested using XP Professional and Vista Professional. The approx 6.1MB program downloaded and installed using an install wizard very quickly (one quirk where it stopped the progress bar for about 2 minutes (in Vista) and I was worried, but I waited and it finished… it could have been my computer or Vista, who knows).
• There is a backup and restore capability. (I found some issues with this, if you are interested, they are presented at the bottom of this article)

Support:

• There is phone and email support. (I did not have time to try these)
• There is also a Yahoo newsgroup that has about 10-20 posts per week sharing recipe ideas and some support information.

Usability:

I really struggled with getting started with this recipe software program.

• There are icons on the menu, but no hover text to let you know what they do.
• If I am on the shopping list screen, I can’t view the recipe or the menu planner screens, however, if I am on the menu planner screen I can view the recipe screen but not the shopping list screen. Not really sure why there’s inconsistency or why it doesn’t just let me view what I want.
• Many things are file based and use browser/prompters for you to choose filenames for shopping lists, menu planners, etc. Personally, if you are weak on files and folders etc, this could be daunting. I would prefer being prompted by a list of names that I choose and leave it up to the application to decide where to saves this data.
• I spent a long time trying to add a new shopping list (it mentions in the online help to “just go to File…”) but when you do there’s no option there. Hours later I found it mentioned on the website FAQs that you have to go open a shopping list, to show the option to go open a new one. (menu planners work the same way)
• There are two ways to view the shopping list (list by aisle and list cost). The first uses the shopping list you have open, where the later prompts you to choose a shopping list from a file prompter. Not sure why both just don’t use the shopping list you have open.
• The recipe screen allows multiple select. Some things like printing make use of your selections, however other things like changing the ratings (which is right beside the print button) does not. The inconsistency makes you go double check everything you do.
• Within a recipe, there are features to add, delete, replace an ingredient with a choice made by the user. More than once, I had selected an ingredient in the recipe, entered a slightly changed ingredient and pressed replace, only to find that it added it to my recipe instead of replacing what I had selected. (The shopping lists seem to have a similar problem, or my lack of understanding how to use them)
• I also got a lot of error messages popping up. I seemed to get error 53 the most, not entirely sure what it was about, but I just close and continue.

Let’s keep in mind, the more features a recipe software application has, the more things that you can problems about. So, aside from some usability issues and small bugs, the application has many features described below, in the “other features” section, and some that I did not have time to review.

• Searching for recipes was very good. You can search by a keyword in the recipe name or ingredient and use an “any of keywords” or “all keywords” if you want to search for more than one keyword. You can also search all tagged recipes and if you search all rated recipes, the list comes back sorted with the highest rated recipes on top (more on rating recipes below).
• The application has an online help tool, although, I could not easily find the solutions to my adding a new shopping list problem. It is very extensive, however, that sometimes makes it trickier to find what you are looking for.
• It does provide emailing of recipes in NYC or Meal-Master format.
• Recipes can be printed in several standard formats.

Recipes:

• There are only 16 recipes provided. The website however has over 100,000 recipes, in zipped files that the application will download, unzip, and import for you. This was fairly easy to do, but some of the wording of the recipe zipped files makes it difficult to know what recipes you are going to get from the download.
• The quality seems good, but the photos that I saw looked like they were taken in the 1970s. Adding your own photo is easy enough and you can replace the ones they give you.



• Adding your own recipe is easy enough, however, each ingredient needs to be entered one at a time. There is an option that will split text (if you want to add a recipe via copy and paste) into ingredient lines and it does it rather well, however, you will need to replace each ingredient with the application’s stock ingredient if you want nutritional information to be pulled properly.
• Now You’re Cooking has a cool ratings feature. You can add raters (like Mom, Dad, Bob, Sue…) and criteria (like taste, appearance, ease, overall…) and each person can rate those criteria for each recipe.
• I didn’t see a favorites option, however there is a tagged option, but I’m not sure if that is reserved for another feature.

Other features

How to videos: none that I could see, however, website does have information and there were many things that I didn’t have a chance to get to.

Glossary:

A glossary of over 1500 terms (actually, probably much fewer since many terms offer up several definitions), here’s an example:

Bouillabaisse: A hearty fish and shellfish stew favored with saffron. A traditional specialty of Marseilles, France.

Nutritional breakdown:

Each stock ingredient has a nutritional breakdown supplied. Each of those that are added into a recipe, can give the recipe a breakdown of nutritional values too.

Obviously, there are limits to picking their ingredients as opposed to an ingredient of your own that just happens to be worded the same, units of measure need to convert from the recipe to the ingredient/nutrition table properly, etc. I added a recipe, then replaced each ingredient with a stock ingredient and still the nutritional analyzer calculated 8000 calories for my recipe as to the recipe’s author’s calculation of about 2000 calories (I quickly ran around the house adding up nutritional facts from labels and concur that the 2000 calories is a pretty close estimate). There is probably a good reason for the difference and if I had the time, I would have checked each ingredient’s nutritional values to what was on the labels of my products and could then update them, so all recipes using that product would have my updated values, but that too is time consuming.

Fitness:

This is an interesting feature that allows you to enter your body stats and lets you know how many calories per day you should eat to maintain, lose, or gain weight, tells you BMI stats, body fat stats etc.

Meal Planners:

There is a meal planner facility. Some of its features I could not figure out in the short time that I wanted to spare for it. One thing, when you save the meal plan, it adds all of your ingredients to the shopping list. You will then have to go into your shopping list and manually remove them all.

Shopping lists:

There is a very complex shopping list feature with printing in several different ways (the list, list for aisles by store, list by cost). I also had limited success in trying to update the list, but this may be a lack of experience with this tool.

Imports:

Imports Meal-Master, Mastercook, and generic txt formats.

Exports:

Exports to Meal-Master, Mastercook, and generic txt formats.

Conclusions:

Pros:

• Downloaded and installed quickly.
• Somewhat easy to add a new recipe (easier if you are not worried about nutrition).
• Many easy to download and import recipes.
• Good search ability.
• Cute ratings feature.
• Nice glossary feature.
• Interesting fitness feature.

Cons:

• Fairly time consuming to learn.
• Too much file and folder knowledge needed (I would be leery if I were a PC novice).
• No How to videos.

Uncertainties:

• Shopping list, Menu planner, and nutritional features are all fairly complex. They provide benefit if you are willing to invest your time and effort into understanding how they work and maintain their data. If you don’t, they are of little benefit.
• There are many aspects of this recipe software (such as cookbooks and categories (recipes are listed in cookbooks by categories), coupons, data management, application options, etc.) that Recipe Software Guide just didn’t have time to absorb. If you are a recipe super user then this functionality may be worth pursuing, otherwise it will make the application more confusing for users wishing a simpler recipe program.

Backup/Restore issues:

Backup and restore is within the application. For backups, that is not much of a factor, however for restores you need to be able to start the application (using files that might be corrupted) to get to the restore process.

I performed 2 tests:

• I tested backing up my folder to a USB stick, then tried to restore it. The restore screen has a field for the “restore into this folder” however, it didn’t let me key anything into it, which I thought was odd, so I just went and restored any way. What it did was unzip all the files for the application onto my USB card (which gave me another task to clean it up later). I gave up on this restore task.
• I then tested deleting the files in the folder and then trying to restore. After my previous encounter with the restore procedure, I figured I should copy the backed up file back into my folder on the PC. I however, now had problems getting into the application because it needs files that I had deleted and needed to restore. Fortunately, my unfortunate mistake to my USB card above actually saved me and I copied a user.ini and nyc.key file back into my folder and this time I could start the application. I then went into the restore screen and picked the file to restore and it filled in the “restore into this folder” field for me. I selected restore everything and it seemed to work fine.

I suppose, I could have reinstalled the application (hopefully if I paid, instead of using the trial, I would have a file or be able to download again) and then copied my backed up file into the folder, which should let me start the application and restore, but I just don’t have time to test all that out.

Now its time to get back to testing.
Ian

Bookmark It

Hide Sites