MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0

by Vivendi Universal

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004Y2OH
• Item model number: 71053
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 14, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,116 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #60 in Software > Home & Hobbies > Cooking & Health
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Open up the box and start drooling--the pictures on the cover of MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0 don't look like any "lite" food we've tasted recently. After we had a glance at Barbecued Flank Steak with Chutney-Bourbon Glaze and the Maple, Fig, and Marsala Pie, we couldn't wait to install the software and start exploring recipes from almost a decade of Cooking Light archives.

After installing Cooking Light 6.0, we were directed to a start page, complete with a table of contents and pictures of delectable-looking treats. The application is divided into eight basic sections, all of which appear on a navigation bar that stays with you as you explore these areas. A MasterList contains every single recipe on the application, from Asparagus with Herbed Cheese on Toast to Chocolate-Cream Raspberry Tart. Once you click on a recipe, you'll get a list of ingredients and measurements, as well as easy-to-follow directions. In addition, there is a vertical toolbar that runs throughout the application, offering opportunities to find out more about specific ingredients, scale your recipes to fit your guest list, edit recipes, and print your selections or e-mail them to friends or family (who knows, you may inspire someone to whip you up a delicious meal).

Of course, with a name like Cooking Light, you have to expect some nutritional analysis. For each recipe, you have the option to click on a heart-shaped icon, which pulls up nutritional information such as total fat, total carbs, sodium count, and more. The application lists the number of grams per serving, as well as the percent daily value per serving, much like the nutritional labels on most packaged food. You can also obtain nutritional information for specific ingredients by clicking on the Ingredient List in the Tools menu. Once there, you have the option to add and remove ingredients, based on personal preferences.

Cooking Light 6.0 also includes a Wine List feature where you can create categories for your wines and group them accordingly. The application even provides a list of sample wines, complete with information about wineries, regions, and years, as well as pertinent notes. Another cool feature is the Meal Manager, which allows you to create weekly menus, meal plans, shopping lists, and more. There's even a small calendar on the bottom of the screen to keep track of dates and menus.

MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0 is jam-packed with features to help you cook tasty yet healthy meals in less time. While most people won't go into depth with all the features (the era of takeout food is far from over), this is a good tool to make cooking more creative and less tedious. Plus, with all of your recipes safely stored on your computer, you won't have to worry about spilling milk on the one copy of Aunt Edna's famous cornbread recipe. --Gisele Toueg

Amazon.com Product Description

MasterCook Cooking Light's award-winning low-fat recipes, nutrient trackers, real-time nutritional analysis, and diabetic exchanges make it a sophisticated and accurate diet-conscious cooking software package. The software features MasterCook Cooking Light's most powerful recipe management engine yet, as well as 3,000 delicious recipes from the bestselling magazine. Users will save time and money with the import/export functionality, automated shopping lists, recipe scaling, and FastFill recipe entry.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Software Tool!, December 3, 2000

By 

JB (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0 (CD-ROM)

I received the Cooking Light software via a promotion and have loved its functionality. It is everything a cookbook should be. You can build your own cookbooks with your favorite recipes, import recipes from the Internet, recalculate servings, and even develop a shopping list (one that you can sort by food item or location in store). One of the cooler features involves listing everything in your kitchen, then hit a button and MasterCook scans its recipes to give you a list of what you can make with what you have. People who are concerned about nutrition will enjoy that MasterCook calculates nutritional values for all your recipes. The interface for the software is easy to use although it takes some getting use to the idea of the navigation buttons being at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top. Groups will enjoy the tool in that it allows you to "publish" a paper version of your cookbook complete with graphics. Very useful for fund raisers and other activities. The software also includes a subsitution list and a wine list.

It's a great product and I look forward to future releases. I hope they'll add the ability to export shopping lists to PDAs and the possibility of "publishing" your cookbook to the web.

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best cooking/recipe software available, March 10, 2001

By 

Soozie4Him (Chicago suburbs) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0 (CD-ROM)

The feature I most enjoy about this program is the ability to type in your own recipes and get the nutrition information. You can play around with ingredients and see how the nutrition facts change with reducing the cup of chopped walnuts to a half-cup, for example.

I print out my "family favorite" recipes and store them in page protectors in a 3-ring binder. You can add pictures to your recipes too. (there's Aunt Helen with her famous chicken and dumplings!" <g>)

This is perhaps my third version of Mastercook and it keeps getting better with each new version! I already had Mastercook 5.0 Betty Crocker Suite, so by getting the Cooking Light version of 6.0, I was able to keep all my Betty Crocker recipes and add the Cooking Light ones.

You can import recipes that you find on the internet and you can export recipes to put them into an email or a word-processing document.

There are LOTS of recipes included with all the versions of Mastercook - you'll never run out of new things to try! In 6.0, they've improved the speed of the search and it's noticably faster.

Mastercook is the standard by which recipe software is measured - get the best! Like any powerful program, however, it does require some time to learn how to use all the features.

Enjoy!

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solid and inexpensive software, November 5, 2001

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: MasterCook Cooking Light 6.0 (CD-ROM)

Like any software, this program is not perfect - but it is an excellent value. The help function is weak: for example, it was difficult to find where to enter personal ratings of a recipe. However, the program is sufficiently user-friendly that one rarely wishes for a help function.

Cooking Light recipes are an excellent base for cooking. Entering recipes by hand is easy. Importing recipes in MasterCook format from the Serra site is simple. Importing recipes in text format is a bit more difficult but the tool for editing is good.

It provides a number of useful features - meals, meal plans for a period of time, shopping lists, pantry items expiration dates, a wine selector, comprehensive nutritional analysis including exchanges for diabetics - as well as photos, cooking tips etc. I did not load the pictures onto my PC; the program handles the absence with style ... a generic, graytoned picture.

The basic print format is satisfactory with two-sides options; I have not yet experimented with one's ability to manipulate the output.

What features do I wish it had? An ability to export the added ingredients list, a cheese list equivalent to the wine list, and a better handling of alternate ingredients, nutritional analysis for individual family members, purchasable add-ins for other cookbooks, ratings of ingredients by brand name or variety (not all tea is equal, for example)

What features do I especially like? The freedom to use my own categories and rating system, the ability to search for recipes using ingredients I have on hand (useful only AFTER one loads the data which is simple but time consuming), the thoroughness of the nutritional analysis, the arrangement of recipes and menus for easy access, the intuitive interface so one can learn the system by doing ...

This is a software package that makes on-line cookbooks use the computer capabilities for a tangible advantage rather than simply computerizing the paper cookbooks 'cause the computer's there.