Mastercook? Do you have it, do you use it?

[wagnfun]

I overheard some moms at the baseball field talk about the Mastercook computer program. She said it came with recipes but then she could enter her own. Mentioned she could change the servings & it automatically configured the recipe & after clicking a hand full of recipes (say what you are going to serve that week for dinner), you could print up a grocery list.

 

Sounds to good to be true. It sounds like it may take a lot of time initially, it would be very worth it in the long run. Does anyone use it ?

 

Thanks!

[ConnieB]

I've had Mastercook for many years...started with version 3 and stopped upgrading at 8, lol.

 

Yes, you can enter your own recipes, and yes you can create grocery lists from it, but since I need more groceries than just from recipes, I don't use that feature.

 

The feature I think I love most is that you can create your own cookbooks, complete with covers if you choose. Instead of cramming all your recipes into one place, I have them sorted by theme/food, etc....I even have one for homeschool recipes, you know things like making your own playdoh etc. Used that one a lot more when the kids were littler, but it's still there patiently waiting for grandkids, lol. MUCH better than having them all over the place on scraps of paper, or in magazines, or on the computer. Organized and easy to find. I also have a cookbook for "tips"....you know when you're reading a magazine, or even this board, and it gives you a great idea that you want to remember, but you'll never remember where you put it.....mine are in "tips". Keeping it up is probably the hardest part.....I have to remind myself to do it now, not later, or it never gets down. A lot of them aren't pretty...they are cut and paste dumps, but at least the info is there, lol. The other nice feature is that you can insert notes.....and since we tend to do a lot of potlucks with friends, and/or have friends over for meals........I note who I made what for, so I don't make the same recipe twice....silly, I know, but it's a nice feature to me. I can also make quick notes here about it made too much or too little or add something to oomph it up, when I don't want to take the time to recalculate it, etc. Or, added this and it was good, but don't want to necessarily change the original recipe, just know it's an alternative. Ok, you get the idea...notes are good.

 

I took all the cookbooks that I have accumulated over the years and typed all the recipes that we use, or might use, into Mastercook. Even the "how to" type like Joy of Cooking. A big time commitment but spread it out over months and it's not too bad and WELL worth the effort once it's done. Freed up a LOT of book shelf space. Can't believe how many cookbooks I had where we only used 1 or 2 recipes from it....and there were only a handful of "maybe try this" types. Same thing for the million magazines that I was saving with the page turned down on a recipe I hoped to try "someday" and the torn out page pile, lol. I actually created a cookbook called "recipes to try someday" and once I try it and we like it I move to "tried and true"....or delete if we didn't like it.

 

You can also get millions, and I mean millions, of recipes FREE online that are already in Mastercook format. One hint....download them into separate cookbooks (I did it based on where I got them, so I didn't repeat a download later) and be careful about getting your cookbooks too full.....thousands of recipes in one place sound great until you want to sort them or search through them. I download them in books named by the person/website/location that I got them, and then I sort through them and dump the ones that don't sound good, move the good ones to my "try" books. Then I leave the shell (but rename it z-empty-person/website) so that I know that I downloaded it already and don't repeat it. The z puts it at the end out of sight, but easy to find before I download again.

 

 

You can often find the base Mastercook program for about half the price of the "deluxe"....deluxe being the included recipe books that jack up the price.....my advice....if you are like most of us and already have zillions of recipes, go for the base program only. The included recipes aren't anything special....are often found in the collections that you download from others even....and almost always can be found from simliar named cookbooks at the library if you really think you want them.

 

 

An alternative that a friend chose was to subscribe to allrecipes (there is also receipzaar andother places)....you can not only upload your own recipes (and share them with the world) but can easily move the site's recipes from others into your online cookbooks. I personally didn't feel like the annual cost of a subscription was worth it....my friend isn't especially computer savvy and dreaded the thought of learning another program so it was worth it to her. I didn't find the program difficult to learn way back when it was super new and much less user friendly....now the upgrades take maybe an hour to review and play with before I am comfortable. But....I also consider myself computer savvy, and my friend can barely handle email to hear her talk.

 

 

 

Oh...and one last thing....the program itself doesn't take up much harddrive space....but as you add thousands of recipes, photos, cover art, etc, it does start to grow. I originally had put the program on my C drive, but that of course is the one that if anything happens to your computer will either lose everything, or have to have everything moved to be upgraded, reloaded, improved, whatever.......so I changed the default installation to another harddrive that has plenty of space. BUT....since I don't have my tried and true recipes anywhere else, I also keep a CD copy of it. Some of those recipes were handed down from great grands and to lose them would be very sad. I do not bother to backup the "try" or the "sort" type books....I figure if they die, I won't even know what I lost.

 

Ok.....have you fallen asleep yet? lol

[Sharon in SC]

I overheard some moms at the baseball field talk about the Mastercook computer program. She said it came with recipes but then she could enter her own. Mentioned she could change the servings & it automatically configured the recipe & after clicking a hand full of recipes (say what you are going to serve that week for dinner), you could print up a grocery list.

 

Sounds to good to be true. It sounds like it may take a lot of time initially, it would be very worth it in the long run. Does anyone use it ?

 

Thanks!

 

have it and love it

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

It works as described.

 

The key is to enter ingredients consistently.

 

I wanted to use it to clean up my back log of torn magazine pages and hand scrawled notes.

 

There were two problems. Time required to enter everything and the need to print a recipe everytime I wanted to use it.

 

I might be over problem two now that we have a laptop but... I don't want goo on it in the kitchen.

 

I ended up with 3 ring binders full of my papers.

 

However, if you are on a board or email list that shares recipes...this is the perfect way to save and organize them. Keep your files backed up just in case.

[wagnfun]

thanks for the mastercook replies. After reading them & figuring up time for me to input the recipes, I was mentally squashed when I read a few reviews that said it doesn't work well on vista.

 

i love bill gates.:glare:

[Sharon in SC]

thanks for the mastercook replies. After reading them & figuring up time for me to input the recipes, I was mentally squashed when I read a few reviews that said it doesn't work well on vista.

 

i love bill gates.:glare:

 

I wouldn't give up too soon. I just purchased the latest edition and it's running fine with my Vista.