Living Cookbook 2008

by Radium Technologies

Product Features

• Plan meals using the meal planning calendar and calculate nutrition for any recipe, menu or meal
• Manage your kitchen's inventory and create grocery lists organized by grocery aisle
• Import major recipe file formats or copy recipes online; print on any size paper, including index cards
• Share your recipes as files or e-mails or publish and print cookbooks
• Help file with over 450 help topics and online support forum with over 28,000 members

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B001HUJUT4
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 8, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,521 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Living Cookbook 2008 is the seventh major release of the award-winning recipe management software from Radium Technologies. Designed to work seamlessly with every version of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows 7, the new version includes over 100 major enhancements. Use Living Cookbook to organize recipes, plan meals, create menus, calculate nutrition information, create shopping lists, publish cookbooks, export, e-mail and much more. The software is extraordinarily flexible and easy-to-use and Living Cookbook's comprehensive help file, tutorials, demo videos and customer support will ensure that you can find and learn to use the features you need. The software comes with more than 1,000 recipes, and thousands more are available online. Find out why Smart Living Cookbook 2008 is the seventh major release of the award-winning recipe management software from Radium Technologies. Designed to work seamlessly with every version of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows 7, the new version includes over 100 major enhancements. Use Living Cookbook to organize recipes, plan meals, create menus, calculate nutrition information, create shopping lists, publish cookbooks, export, e-mail and much more. The software is extraordinarily flexible and easy-to-use and Living Cookbook's comprehensive help file, tutorials, demo videos and customer support will ensure that you can find and learn to use the features you need. The software comes with more than 1,000 recipes, and thousands more are available online. Find out why Smart Computing Magazine, Choice Magazine and Which? Magazine all chose Living Cookbook as the best cooking and recipe management software.

Living Cookbook makes it easy to enter your recipes. You can type them in, scan them (using the OCR software that came with your scanner) or copy them from the Internet. The software also makes it easy to transfer your recipe collection from other recipe management programs such as MasterCook, Meal-Master and BigOven.	You can print your recipes on any paper size supported by your printer. This includes US Letter, A4, index cards (3x5, 4x6 and 5x9) and many more. You can even print on Avery 5389 (two perforated 4x6 cards on an 8.5x11 sheet) and Avery 5388 (three perforated 3x5 cards on an 8.5x11 sheet).
The meal planning calendar lets you drag and drop your recipes onto the calendar. You can view your meal plans by day, week or month. Creating a shopping list for a meal plan is as simple as clicking on the appropriate days and selecting "Add to Grocery List" from the Action menu.	Living Cookbook lets you calculate nutrition for any recipe, ingredient, menu or meal plan. You can customize your display to show over 150 different nutrients including calories, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and more. You can even calculate Weight Watchers Points.
Living Cookbook makes it easy to publish your own cookbook complete with table of contents, pagination and index. You can preview and print your cookbook directly from Living Cookbook or export it as a Microsoft Word (DOCX) document for additional editing.	Living Cookbook can create shopping lists organized by grocery aisle. Just add your ingredients, recipes, menus and meal plans and the software will do the rest. It even knows how to convert units that you cook with (e.g. "10 Tbs minced garlic") into units that you shop for (e.g. "1 head garlic"). If you enter the prices of your most commonly shopped-for ingredients, Living Cookbook can calculate the total cost of your grocery list as well as subtotals for each store.
Living Cookbook has a built-in web browser that makes it easy to save links to your favorite recipe websites. It even has a built-in RSS feed reader so you can subscribe to "recipe of the day" and other cooking-related RSS feeds.

Product Description

Working with recipes

• Enter recipes with as much or as little detail as you like.
• Add images to recipes. In fact you can add a main recipe image, a source image and an image for every recipe procedure step, if you want to.
• Copy recipes from the Internet.
• Calculate recipe nutrition from the recipe ingredients or enter the nutrition data manually.
• Calculate recipe costs.
• Share recipes with others, even if they don't own Living Cookbook. You can export, e-mail or import recipes in all of the major recipe file formats.
• Add ratings and reviews to recipes.
• Add audio or video files to recipes.
• Assign recipe types and categories.
• Enter the recipe's oven temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.
• Choose from five degrees of difficulty.
• Use a recipe as an ingredient in another recipe.
• Enter preparation time, cooking time, inactive time and total time.
• Organize recipes into cookbooks, chapters, sub-chapters, etc. according to your needs.
• Customize recipe displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Add any number of tips to a recipe to record recipe variations, serving suggestions, wine pairings, etc.
• Enter author, source, web page, copyright and author notes for any recipe.
• Print your recipes on any paper format: US letter, legal, A4, 4x6 index card, 3x5 index card and more.
• Scale recipes to any number of servings.
• Convert recipe units to and from Imperial or metric units.
• Eliminate duplicate recipes automatically.
• Compare any two recipes side-by-side.

Publishing

• Publish your cookbooks with tables of contents and indexes.
• Print your publication from within Living Cookbook or export it as a Microsoft Word document.
• Format your publication using your choice of fonts, colors, spacing and layouts.

Working with ingredients

• Choose from over 7000 ingredients with nutrition data provided by the USDA.
• Enter your own custom ingredients or copy them from the Internet.
• Import new USDA nutrition as it is made available by the USDA.
• Add ingredient images and source images.
• Add any number of custom measures (units) for each ingredient.
• Assign costs, grocery aisles and preferred stores to ingredients.
• Enter ingredient nodes to describe the ingredient, record uses and preparation information, etc.
• Share ingredients with other Living Cookbook users.
• Organize ingredients into folders and sub-folders.
• Customize ingredient displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Eliminate duplicate ingredients automatically.
• Compare any two ingredients side-by-side.
• Copy ingredients from the Internet.

Working with menus

• Create your own menus using any combination of recipes, ingredient, headings and text.
• Add menu images and source images.
• Calculate menu nutrition from the menu items or enter the nutrition data manually.
• Calculate menu costs.
• Share menus with other Living Cookbook users.
• Add audio or video files to menus.
• Assign menu types and categories.
• Organize menus into folders and sub-folders.
• Customize menu displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Add any number of tips to a menu to record menu variations, serving suggestions, wine pairings, etc.
• Enter author, source, web page, copyright and author notes for any menu.
• Eliminate duplicate menus automatically.
• Compare any two menus side-by-side.

Working with meals

• Add recipes, ingredients, menus, headings and text to meals.
• Choose from nine different meals each day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, snacks, nightcap, etc.)
• Add meal headings to organize meals into courses (e.g. Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert, etc.)
• Use drag and drop or copy and paste to add ingredient, recipes or menus to a meal.
• Use drag and drop or copy and paste to move or copy a range of days, a single day, a meal or individual meal items.
• Calculate nutrition for meals, days or a user-defined range of days.
• Calculate meal and day costs.
• Share meal data with other Living Cookbook users.
• Customize calendar displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• View nutrition and cost summary information for a day or a range of dates.
• View meal calendar in month, week or day mode.

Working with grocery lists

• Add recipe, ingredients, menus or meals grocery lists or enter the grocery list items manually.
• Create a grocery list for multiple stores.
• Calculate grocery list costs and subtotal by store.
• Automatically organize the grocery list by aisles.
• Customize grocery aisles by store, including grocery aisle order.
• Customize grocery list displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Share grocery lists with other Living Cookbook users.
• Create a grocery list to restock inventory.
• Create a grocery list for a range of meal plan dates.
• Automatically combine like grocery list items (e.g. "1 cup milk" and "1 pint milk" will be combined automatically to read "1 1/2 pints milk".
• Compare any two grocery lists side-by-side.

Working with inventory

• Manage your kitchen inventory.
• Control the ordering properties of any inventory item (minimum order quantity, order at level, order up to level, etc.).
• Share inventory data with other Living Cookbook users.
• Customize inventory displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Create a printable inventory worksheet to help you take stock of your kitchen.
• Compare any two inventory items side-by-side.

Working with glossary items

• Enter your own glossary items or copy them from the Internet.
• Add glossary item images and source images.
• Share glossary data with other Living Cookbook users.
• Customize glossary displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Eliminate duplicate glossary items automatically.
• Compare any two glossary items side-by-side.

Working with techniques

• Enter your own techniques or copy them from the Internet.
• Add an image to each technique step.
• Share techniques with other Living Cookbook users.
• Customize technique displays using your choice of fonts, background colors, headings and more.
• Eliminate duplicate techniques automatically.
• Compare any two techniques side-by-side.

Working with the Internet

• Browse the Internet with Living Cookbook's built-in web browser.
• Save references to web pages you like in Living Cookbook's database.
• Share saved web pages with other Living Cookbook users.

Working with RSS feeds

• View RSS feeds with Living Cookbook's built-in RSS feed aggregator.
• Save RSS feeds in Living Cookbook's database.
• Share RSS feeds with other Living Cookbook users.

Other features

• Backup your Living Cookbook database.
• Configure Living Cookbook to backup your database every time you close the application or Living Cookbook can prompt you to backup periodically (you choose how often).
• Verify the integrity of a backup file before restoring it.
• Restore Living Cookbook backup files from any version of Living Cookbook.
• Compact the Living Cookbook database to shrink it to its smallest possible size.
• Search, filter and saved searches
• Choose from basic or advanced search modes to find the recipes, ingredients, meals and other data you need.
• Save advanced searches in your database for future use.
• Drag one or more saved searches onto Living Cookbook's filter bar to filter all search results.
• Use Living Cookbook's search and replace feature to replace text anywhere in the database.
• Use copy and paste to duplicate recipes, ingredients, meals, and more.
• Use drag and drop to move or copy recipe, ingredients, meals, etc.
• Use Living Cookbook's undo and redo to undo almost any action.
• Browse Living Cookbook's comprehensive help file with more than 480 indexed and searchable help topics.
• Use Living Cookbook's unique Kitchen Calculator tool to convert between units.
• Flag recipes, ingredient, etc. using one of six color flags.
• New users can use Living Cookbook's Launchpad feature to help them see all of the actions that can be performed on the selected item.
• Check the spelling of recipes, ingredient, meals, glossary items and techniques. Choose either standard or as-you-type (wavy red line under misspelled words) spell-checking.
• Use the Back and Forward toolbar buttons to back and forth to recently viewed items.
• Use Living Cookbook's built-in database repair tools to fix any potential database problems.
• Copy and paste or drag and drop recipes to other applications that accept plain text from the Windows clipboard (e.g. drag a a recipe to an e-mail).
• Open multiple recipe workspaces at the same time.
• Create links to your favorite or most-viewed recipes, ingredients and other data.
• Customize and print any list (e.g. recipe lists, ingredient lists, etc.).
• Print multiple recipes, ingredient, etc. at once.
• Export to any list to Excel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

146 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: Living Cookbook is Addicting! :-), November 21, 2008

By 

The 'M' Family - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Cookbook 2008 (CD-ROM)

Ok, I have literally tried all of the cooking software out there and when I tried Living Cookbook over 2 years ago - I was hooked! It is by far the best and most amazing program for organizing your recipes in one place. It is very robust, but easy to learn... so you can use it for a few recipes or thousands! I recently upgraded to the latest version `Living Cookbook 2008' and I'm glad I did... it's fully compatible with my new Vista Laptop and I love the ability it has to customize everything (from the fonts and colors, to the recipe layout and more).

Since I started meal planning, our family has saved over $200 extra on groceries each month! And in case anyone might be wondering, we shop and eat all organically. Living Cookbook has no troubles keeping up with all my custom foods - and lets me enter in as many new ingredients as I want.

My favorite features are the Meal Planning; Inventory; and Shopping List capabilities... no more guessing when I go to the store. It literally lets me drag and drop recipes/meals to a calendar, and it will generate a shopping list of what I need to buy... but it also takes into account the inventory I already have on hand - so no unnecessary purchases! If you take the time to enter in food prices, it can also calculate shopping costs too! The only thing I'd like to see added is the ability to adjust my inventory on hand `on the fly' within the inventory table list. But Lee has assured us, that this is one of the upgrades he has planned for a near-future software update.

I must also comment on the outstanding support offered by 'Lee' (the software's developer) on the support forum. How often do you buy something and have the ability to ask questions directly from the source!? On the rare occasion when I've had a question, Lee's response time has been quicker than when I call my own Mother for help! :-)

My one warning to new users... Beware - this software is addicting! My husband recently came out of the bedroom half asleep to inform me that it was 1:30 in the morning - I had been glued to my new upgrade to Living Cookbook 2008 and was having so much fun that I didn't realized so much time had passed!

Enjoy & God Bless!

73 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Has every feature on my wish list (and more!), November 30, 2008

By 

Litza Stark (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Cookbook 2008 (CD-ROM)

I'm a computer programmer and an avid cook, and for years I fantasized (and even tried to write) my ideal recipe database program. After admitting defeat, I rigorously explored several websites and software packages, including Now You're Cooking and BigOven, but when I got to Living Cookbook, I knew I'd found everything that I was looking for.

I don't even use the menu planning/shopping list features -- my favorite features are:

(1) It's ridiculously easy to snag recipes from websites and other sources and get them into the Living Cookbook format.

(2) If you're not interested in using a feature, it's easy to change your settings so that you don't have to see it on your recipes or exports.

(3) If you like having your recipes on paper in your kitchen, it's ridiculously easy to publish a beautiful paper cookbook with table of contents and index (this was one of my main goals) and to customize its appearance.

(4) There's incredibly clear and comprehensive documentation included in the software, as well as excellent support available on the online forums.

If you're looking for flexible, robust, well-supported recipe software, look no further. This product would be worth twice the price.

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good for some things, absolutely terrible for others, January 5, 2010

By 

TJW "Tim Weichman" (Merlin, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living Cookbook 2008 (CD-ROM)

When I bought this program I was fully expecting to come back and submit a glowing 5-star review. But after using the program (pretty much every aspect of it) for about 3 months, I have to say I'm very disappointed. Depending on how you want to use the program it could be great, or it could be a total mess.

First, the good:
=================
If you're looking for a way to capture all your recipes from paper, organize them, and have them on hand for easy retrieval, this is your program. It has an absolutely brilliant recipe import & capture system. You paste your recipe into a little capture box, then there's a really nifty color-coded set of buttons you use to tell the program which parts of the pasted text are the title, list of ingredients, serving size, cooking procedure, etc., etc., and then it handles the rest. I used this feature extensively to transfer a ton of recipes from photo-copied cookbook pages that I scanned into my computer. Saves A LOT of typing. You'll still need to review the converted recipe to make sure it understood the 1/2 and 1/4 designations used for half and quarter measures in cups, tablespoons, etc. But for the most part, really great functionality.

The shopping list feature is also pretty good. Assign recipes and # of servings to various meals spread over as many days as you like, then tell the system to make a shopping list for all meals planned on those days. It handles the rest and gives you a list of everything you need to buy. Great.

Now the bad:
=============
The one huge drawback to this program comes in the area where every cooking program should be designed to excel. Meal planning. It's terrible for this. I mean really bad. Now, to be fair, it has the ability to do everything you'll need to do when it comes to planning your meals. The problem is that it's incredibly inflexible -- making it a nightmare to make small but necessary changes to your meal plan.

The way I wanted to use the program was to specify all the meals I'm going to make for the next week by assigning them to breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, & dinner for each day of the week. The problem is that the program makes this process incredibly difficult every step of the way. The best I've come up with so far is to have 2 workspace windows open at once. One to show the recipes and one to show the meal planning calendar. Then I drag and drop them from the recipe list onto the day I want to cook them.

Not so bad so far. But here's the first obstacle you'll run into. The meal planning calendar is rigid in size. When you add recipes for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack, chances are you'll fill up the available view. So then when you add "dinner" it gets hidden below the others. You can't see it down there in the monthly calendar view because there's no scrollbar. There's a little "down arrow" that tells you there's more below, but you can't see it. So now you have to click to get the Weekly view instead of the Monthly. Depending on the day and the number of items this may or may not fix the problem. If it doesn't then you need to switch to the Day view.

Now imagine you're planning meals for the next 7 days. I guarantee you will constantly be zooming in, zooming out, wondering if you've added the "late-night snack" to this day or that day, accidentally adding meal items to the wrong meal, leaving out meals that you assumed were down in the hidden area, etc.

So that's planning mess #1. Planning mess #2 comes in when you're trying to move meals or meal items from one day to another. This happens more than you might imagine -- think what happens to your meal plan when someone invites you out for dinner... or when you miss most of the day's meals due to some unexpected circumstance. You want to move those meals to another day right? Or how about the scenario where you're not super hungry, and instead of making the two or three dishes you had planned for a meal, you make only one. You want to move those meal items to different days, right? Well this program is either full of bugs or is just a bad design when it comes to these operations. Sometimes you'd like to take your lunch items and move them to dinner for a different day. There's no simple way to do it (*sometimes you can drag and drop it, but not always*, and if the item is hidden from view, good luck!). Sometimes you try copying-and-pasting an entire meal to a different day and it just won't let you. You can't get it to go to the place where you want it. So then you have to go through the hassle of adding the meals to the day as new items.

The meal planning features are so bad that I keep putting it off knowing it's going to take several hours to layout a simple meal plan for the next week.

But the frustration doesn't stop here. There's all sorts of smaller bugs and poor design elements. The software appears to be constructed by a one-man show (as far as I can tell). This doesn't necessarily mean it will be good or bad. But as a software developer myself I know there are tendencies -- when pushed on time -- to implement new features in the simplest way possible instead of designing them properly. Some examples of poor design and other limitations:

1) When you are adding a new recipe, there's an option to add source information so you know which of your cookbooks it came from. A proper design would have a way for you to create a "Source". Then, when you are entering a recipe from the same book, you would just select the book from a list of Sources. Instead, you have the option to use the "Last source" you specified or enter new information. This means each time you enter a recipe from cookbook A, if the last recipe you added wasn't also from cookbook A, you'll have to go get the cookbook and enter the information AGAIN... and again... and again.

2) Grocery Lists: You can print them, but you can't copy-and-paste them into Word, etc. You can't search them for a given ingredient (needed when you want to know if that last 1/2 a beet is needed for one recipe or two). And the default formatting is terrible.

3) I have 18 other stumbling blocks written down that I plan to send to the software company as design improvements, but this review is already too long.