The Gormet Recipe Manager is one such tool that comes very, very close to hitting this nail on the  head. And although this tool has features my wife will never use (such as regular expression searching), I think it might be one that needs a real cool to kick the tires. But from a geek stand-point, the software is pretty good. In this tuturial you will see how GRM is installed and how you can add recipes from supported web site formats.

Features

The Gourmet Recipe Manager offers the following features:

• Searching and sorting.
• Easy to use GUI
• Simple recipe editing.
• Importing and exporting.
• Recipe rating.
• Shopping list creator/organizer.

Gormet can also import the following formats:

• Mealmaster files
• Rich Text Format
• Plain Text
• Recipe Web Pages
• Gourmet XML files

What more do you need in a recipe manager? Now let’s take a look at the simple installation.

Installation

As you can probably gues, the installation is the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure):

1. Open your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “gourmet”.
3. Mark Gourmet Recipe Manager for installation.
4. Click Apply.

Watch the installation magic happen.

Once installed, you will find the menu entry in the Accessories sub-menu of the Applications menu. Let’s fire this baby up.

Using GRM

Figure 1

Obviously the first thing you will want to do is add a recipe. This is quite simple. From the main window (see Figure 1) click on the File menu and select New. Don’t expect any sort of wizard here. What you will find is a single window that allows you to input all of the information for your recipe that you need.  Of note during recipe input is that the Instructions and the Notes are free-form. You can do some formatting, but nothing really detailed.

Figure 2

You will find adding recipe ingredients allows you to go into quite a bit of detail. Instead of just adding text to a list of ingredients, the input has a bit of intelligence. Say, for example, if you are adding Flour. When you enter Flour as your ingredient you will notice the Ingredient key will modify to allow you to select from specific types of flour from a drop down list (see Figure 2).

Once you have completed your recipe make sure you click the Save button or the recipe will not be added to the database.

And finally, when your recipe is completed you can open it back up from the main window and click the Shop button where you can view and print out the items you need to purchase.

Importing recipe from web site

Let’s take a look at how you import recipes from a web site. The best place to grab recipes from is the RecipeZaar. I will warn you though, there is some formatting that needs to be done with these recipes. However, once you get the hang of it, this site can really be a boon too chefs.

Figure 3

To import a recipe from a web site go to the File menu (on the main window) and select Import From Webpage. A small window will open where you will enter the URL to the recipe you want to import. On the RecipeZaar site you will want to go to the actual page of the recipe you want to import and copy that full URL. Once you have done this click OK to import the page. When the import is complete you will have a new window that resembles Figure 3. Here’s the trick to this – on a site like RecipeZaar an imported recipe will include a bunch of items you do not need. So go through each imported recipe and delete the items like:

• My Page
• My Cookbooks
• My Account

etc.

Figure 4

You’ll see exactly what I mean. But in order to delete the items you need to click the “Reveal hidden text” button to show you the text you are not seeing. Figure 4 shows revealed text (that is also highlighted for deletion).

Once you have all of the unecessary text deleted (anything in red can not be deleted) click the OK and finalize the recipe by selecting an image to go along with the recipe.

Don’t worry though, if a recipe is a jumbled mess, or you know something is wrong, you can change this by clicking the Edit Descrption button when viewing the recipe.

Final thoughts

It’s not perfect, but Gormet Recipe Manager has a lot of promise. If this tool can actually make my wife’s job easier, then I have certainly found a winner.

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Even better is the creation of shopping lists and the mobile version that is compatible with Windows Mobile Devices.

It is possible to add recipes manually to the software program or import them from RecipeML files, the most common recipe format on the Internet. Various websites provide access to recipe downloads which can then be comfortable added to the recipe software.

ChickenPing users can also export recipes to transfer them to another computer system or a mobile device. Recipes can be automatically adjusted by the program according to the number of users the meal is served for which removes calculation problems from the process. The new version that has been released recently now supports multiple recipe snapshots that can even be uploaded to Flickr (if you search for recipe on Flickr you know why this is a popular option).

A search is provided as well which can be used to search for recipes by name, category or specific ingredient. ChickenPing is a sophisticated free recipe software for the Windows operating system that can be a real asset for computer users who cook regularly.

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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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