This MacNews Category Review looks at recipe software for Mac OS X. Products covered include A Cook's Books, Barssentials Drink Guide, Barware Deluxe, BeerAlchemy, BeerMeister, BusyCooks RecipeDB, Caboodle, CardBook, cateredge, Computer Cookbook, Computer Cusinine Deluxe, Connoisseur, Cookware Deluxe, Cybernetic Dietician, DashCook Widget, Diet Sleuth, Extra Recipes Set, EZgather, Food Cost Manager, Frenchdiet, Grocery Website Modules, Homebrew Formulator, i-Recipes, iCulstot, Kitchen and Kitchen Companion.

A Cook's Books

[url=http://www.3caam.com/]A Cook's Books[/url] is a recipe manager and nutritional reference tool. It can be used to add recipes, edit existing recipes, and scale recipes by amount or by serving simple and intuitive.

Barssentials Drink Guide

[url=http://www.barssentials.com/]The Barssentials Drink Guide[/url] is a guide for mixing cocktails.

Barware Deluxe

[url=http://www.DigitalFriedChicken.com/]Barware Deluxe[/url] is a bartending guide, giving you instructions on everything from making classic drinks to building your mixology vocabulary.

BeerAlchemy

[url=http://www.kentplacesoftware.com]Kent Place Software[/url] makes BeerAlchemy, a beer recipe creation and archiving tool for Mac OS X. A demo is available at the Kent Place Software web site. BeerAlchemy is Universal Binary so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.

BeerMeister

[url=http://members.cox.net/mrstuffbm/beermeister.htm]BeerMeiser[/url] is a tool for rganizing your home brewing recipes. It's a database designed explicitly for the needs of brewers with import/export, printing, searching by any field, room for brewing notes, and a recipe creation guide.

BusyCooks RecipeDB

[url=http://www.busycooks.com/]BusyCooks RecipeDB[/url] lets you organize all your recipes on the Mac . You can: enter and organize your own recipes; add or remove categories as needed; search hundreds of recipes; edit recipes; print recipes automatically; email recipe; export the database for back-up; cut and paste recipes into the database from web sites, text files, emails, etc.

Caboodle

[url=http://www.dejal.com/]Caboodle[/url] lets you store and organize recipes, directions, photos, serial numbers and more.

CardBook
[url=http://www.plsys.com/]CardBook[/url] is a card index application for Mac OS X with full source code included.

cateredge

[url=http://www.cateredgesoftware.com/]cateredge[/url] is software that automates the management of a catering business.

Computer Cookbook

The [url=http://www.ComputerCookbook.com/]Computer Cookbook[/url] allows you to keep track of your favorite recipes easily on your computer. You enter your recipes as you would find them in printed recipes and cookbooks, as whole numbers & fractions

Computer Cuisine Deluxe

[url=http://www.inakasoftware.com/]Computer Cuisine Deluxe[/url] lets you organize your recipes. Over 1,000 recipes come with it.

Connoisseur

[url=http://www.thelittleappfactory.com/]Connoisseur[/url] is a tool for managing your recipes. Features include an online catalog of free recipes, a shopping list, exporting to iPod or PDA, unit conversion, printing and more.

Cookware Deluxe

[url=http://www.DigitalFriedChicken.com/]Cookware Deluxe[/url] is for managing and storing recipes.

Cybernetic Dietician

[url=http://www.satoripublishing.com/]Cybernetic Dietician[/url] is a diet and recipe analysis program with a built-in database of 2,400 foods. It analyzes your diet with summaries of calories, protein, fats and carbohydrates and, in the registered version, cholesterol, fiber, sodium and calcium. You can modify the built in database with your own foods as well.

DashCook Widget

[url=http://guide.apple.com/action.lasso?-database=macosguide&-layout=cgi_detail&-response=/ussearch/detail.html&prodkey=70736&-search]DashCook Widget[/url] offers cooking news and recipes via a RSS feed.

Diet Sleuth

Black Cat Systems offers [url=http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/diet.html]Diet Sleuth[/url], a diet and nutrition tracking app. It allows you to keep track of what foods you eat each day, and their nutritional value. For each day, you select the foods you’ve eaten, and the number of servings of each. Diet Sleuth will automatically calculate your caloric intake, fat grams, carbohydrates, fiber, protein, cholesterol, along with sodium, potassium, and calcium. You can select from over 5000 different foods from 21 categories, including fast food, lunch meat, junk food, seafood, and baby food.

In addition to the included food groups, you can create and edit your own foods in a separate category. You can also create a category of favorite foods to access commonly used foods. In addition, you can enter nutritional information for your own custom foods. Diet Sleuth users can exchange custom foods with each other.

A built-in Recipe Editor allows you to enter a custom recipe, with the nutritional information automatically calculated, based on the ingredients. Diet Sleuth can also keep track of your daily weight, and calculate your EER or Estimated Energy Requirements, which is an estimate of how many calories you burn each day, based on various factors. This lets you estimate how much weight you can expect to lose on a given day, based on your caloric intake.

Diet Sleuth costs US$34.95. A demo version is available at the Black Cat web site.

Extra Recipes Set

[url=http://www.DigitalFriedChicken.com/]Extra Recipes Set are added recipes for CookWare Deluxe. Set 1 contains 750 recipes, and set 2 contains 470 recipes. Both are meant to be imported into CookWare Deluxe.

EZgather

[url=http://www.unvisibleuniverse.com/]EZgather[/url] is a freeform database that lets you store pages of text information -- anything from sales contacts to recipes to videotape collections. You can search by text or keyword.

Food Cost Manager

[url=http://www.actorissoftware.com/]Food Cost Manager[/url] back office solution for the food service industry. It provides features for inventory control, purchasing, recipe and menu management. Another feature is Food Cost Manager’s ideal usage report. Using this report, you can compare actual inventory usage to ideal usage based on your recipes. This allows you to identify problem areas with processes, or shrinkage.

Frenchdiet

[url=http://www.diondine.com/]Frenchdiet[/url] is nutrition software that estimates the ideal weight and the caloric requirements. For people on a diet, Frenchdiet monitors the food intakes on a day to day basis. Several analyses are provided: detailed reports for 19 nutrients, food pyramid, food podium, Mediterranean diet analysis, weight curve, diet simulator. Custom foods, meals and recipes can be created. Various help systems are available : complete on-line documentation, description screens and tooltips.

Grocery Website Modules

[url=http://www.Webstop.com/]Grocery Website Modules[/url] are sets of grocery specific web pages. Current modules include Recipes, Weekly Ad, personalized Shopping Lists, and online login via retailer Shopper Card and others. Modules can be added to any web site, or used to build a complete web site.

Homebrew Formulator

[url=http://brew.reboritull.com/Site/Welcome.html]Homebrew Formulator[/url] is an application for creating and managing beer recipes. It's a Filemaker runtime application, so it has a database driving its capabilities

i-Recipes

[url=http://www.edenskitchen.com/]i-Recipes[/url] is recipe management software. With it you can to create, collect, manage, share, and print recipes. You can also import any recipe found on the developer's web site.

iCuistot

[url=http://www.cafederic.com/en/overview.html]iCuistot[/url] is recipe management software. Features include more than 150 different fields for each recipes, printing with themes, support for both books and smart groups, a nutritional database of more than 6,800 foods, and a complete Australian, American, Canadian, Imperial and metric units converter.

Kitchen

[url=http://www.epigroove.com/]Kitchen[/url] is software for organising your recipe collection; it includes a facility for automatic production of shopping lists.

Kitchen Companion

IntelliScanner makes [url=http://www.intelliscanner.com/products/kitchen/]IntelliScanner Kitchen Companion 100[/url], a barcode scanner and software bundle for grocery shopping and nutrition/recipe management. It's powered by an Internet-enabled database of over 300,000 grocery items.

You scan the barcode on anything as it's thrown away, then download the information to the software to save details such as the name, brand, category, shopping section, and size. You can print out a categorized shopping list or send the list to an iPod, Palm, or cell phone. For "power users," Kitchen Companion offers advanced quantity management, scan in/out capabilities, consumption history, physical location tracking, custom searching, dynamic shopping lists, and nutrition information from the USDA.

Kitchen Companion 100 is portable with an integrated 500 barcode memory chip. The Mac OS X (10.3 or higher) is available for Bluetooth equipped computers for US$279 or in a "tethered" USB model for use while at a computer for $179. It includes the scanner and software in one box.

Next week: part two.