Coolest program ever

Yes, you get 2 posts from me today. ?I’ll be honest. ?I’ve been diligent about writing my posts a few days in advance and setting them up to post early in the morning. ?This way I can post stuff when I’m thinking about it. ?However, you get 2 today because I found the greatest program ever.

Our church recently underwent a major remodel. ?Like we added on a whole 2 story new wing. ?It kicks ass. ?(A side benefit of the remodel is that I got my own {shared} office yay!) ?The only bad thing about the remodel is that it was very expensive and we didn’t get to finish the kitchen. ?The kitchen space was expanded, but the actual kitchen wasn’t finished. ?Good news, we have money available for the remodel. ?Even, in an odd way, better news is that a local restaurant closed (boo, I loved that place) and we got a large majority of the restaurant pantry (yay I never have to buy spices again). ?The restaurant also sold all of their kitchen equipment on ebay and our church treasurer happens to be the master of ebay. ?He’s scored us a commercial grade carpet cleaner, an industrial food warmer and most recently, the restaurant’s refrigerator. ?Problem is there is no where to hook any of this stuff up.

We have 2 people who do the hospitality stuff for our church and they had the idea to put together a church cookbook. ?Church cookbooks are the best. ?They just wanted to do it for fun, but my idea was to have the money made from the cookbook go to something. ?Hey! ?We need a new kitchen.

I volunteered to be the one to coordinate the book and put it all together. ?After all, my job at the church is publications. ?Now I very well could to a cut and paste job on this book and it would look fantastic. ?However, one afternoon I did some searching for a cookbook program and wow did I find a gem.

I found Living Cookbook. ?I downloaded the trial and looked around at it, but didn’t think much about it. ?Well, the church newsletter was sent out today and one of the e-newsletter recipients sent me an email with her submissions for the church cookbook. ?I didn’t have anything to do this morning so I played around with the program inputting her recipes. ?The more I used the program the better it got.

First you can create your own cookbooks. ?I don’t like that you have to manually input all of the ingredients and procedures, but in the end it is worth it. ?The program automatically calculates the nutritional data based on your ingredients and servings for the meal. ?This can be a good or bad thing.

You can keep an inventory of your pantry. ?You can input stores you frequently shop at. ?You can create menus if you are having a dinner party. ?You can create menus for the day/week/month and then best of all, based on the pantry inventory you already set up you can tell the menu on the calendar to create a grocery shopping list for you. ?It will also create an approximate cost of the shopping list (or rather for the meal price). ?The whole program is integrated.

Moreover, you can print your cookbooks (and it comes with great cookbooks already loaded). ?You can upload images of the recipes. ?It has a glossary of cooking terms. ?It is the handiest thing.

You know I already create menus. ?That was a given. ?Usually I write the week’s menu on a 3×5 card and stick it to the fridge. ?I then go through all of the cookbooks looking at the recipes and writing down what ingredients I need to add to the shopping list. ?This program eliminates that step. ?I click here, click there and it makes my shopping list for me. ?In the future I plan on getting a little netbook (for my China trip) and I can load this program onto the netbook so I can just look at the recipes on the computer instead of hauling out the cookbooks.

If you are looking at getting serious about meal planning I highly suggest this program. ?No, I did not get paid to write this review. ?I purchased the program as soon as I saw how cool it was. ?(14 days before my free trial was up)