Manage your favorite recipes and then some

It's not every day I run into a recipe manager. However, if you really think about it, Gourmet Recipe Manager is one piece of software which could probably affect your daily life more than any other. You want a recipe with chicken, but no paprika or tomatoes, and at the same time be ok with your diet? You'd have a hard time doing this in real life, but now you can collect, manage and use your favorite recipies like you've always wanted.

What I really love about this freeware app is that it isn't just a place to store your recipes by typing a list of items you need to make it, and some text of explanation. In fact, I'm testing the application as I write and I am more and more impressed with it. I added "curry" as an ingredient and I immediately got three suggestions (curry, green curry and curry powder). More on the details later on, let's take a look at installing it.

Gourmet recipe manager is meant for the GNOME environment, which means Linux, however, it works an all systems supporting the GTK environment, which means Mac and PC users can rejoice! The current Windows version is 0.13.4, one version behind the latest. Is suggest downloading " gourmet-0.13.4-1-full_gtkglade-2.12.9.exe" which includes the GTK environment. One note to Windows users. i couldn't run the app, I got some error, then I went to its install folder, ran "Gourmet_debug.exe" and now it works. I don't know if this will work for you, let's hope so. Ok, let's see what this app can do!

The whole system of Gourmet Recipe Manager is awesome! Adding a recipe is a 4 step process. First you have to add some general info like type of food, cooking time and so on. The you can add ingredients, which I have previously said is done in a very cool way. There is a small details menu at the bottom, expand it and add the items there, I think it is more accurate and easy to use this way. When you enter an ingredient the ingredient key and shopping category will change automatically. I haven't come across an ingredient it doesn't recognize, from curcuma to coriander, it knows all spices, and everything else! Once done just add the instructions and the notes. I think it makes sense to make the instructions as short as possible and add notes for less experienced budding chefs.

When you have a recipe you have another set of tools at hand. Taking a look at the recipe card you can take a look at the nutritional info. You may have to add the missing info, but this is as simple as clicking on an automatic searcg entry. For example, there were two selections I could make for chicken breast, I just had to choose on. i immediately got detailed nutritional information on my recipe, great for when you're going on a diet, or if you want to live a healthy life.

You also have a shopping list generator. Again, the whole mentality of the app is in here. Some very simple things are added to make your life easier, like being able to drop an item into an "already have" list. This is great since a recipe may well need salt and pepper, which you probabyl already have at home. You can then print the list and start shopping. You can actually add other items to the list, so you can input your non-recipe items if you want.

As you can see I'm very excited about this application. I like cooking and eating, but this is only partly the reason. For me it represents the perfect piece of software. I'm sure it has some problems, I've only been using it for a day, but the whole mentality in which it was developed is great. This is the type of software which gives you exactly what you need for the purpose it is used. It has great practical things built in, and despite the narrow niche it fills, it is quite flexible. I'm off to donate on the sourceforge page!

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