Cook'n with Taste of Home

The recipes here are all family fare and comfort food; pot roast, Instant Party Potatoes, and a cake that actually has Coca-Cola among the ingredients were a few that caused flashbacks. Interestingly, we also found recipes for venison and pheasant--ingredients we don't usually "have right on hand."

This CD-ROM is easier to navigate than some of the other Cook'n titles, and the production quality of the tutorial videos sprinkled throughout the program is also improved. Cooks can adjust the main page to browse by category, ingredient, or photograph (500 out of 600 recipes have pictures). There are 10 chapters of recipes, which range from main dishes to soups to salads to desserts.

This program quickly jumps through all of the hoops we expect cooking CD-ROMs to manage: it adjusts serving sizes, compiles shopping lists and nutritional analysis charts from recipes, helps cooks find recipes based on what they have in the cupboard, and creates weekly, even yearly, menus for the ultra-organized. Recipes and shopping lists can be downloaded onto Palm Pilots, and old-fashioned folks can print these recipes on three-by-five cards (not provided with the program).

For truly nonintuitive cooks, this program will translate the recipe's required 2 cups of tomato sauce into the required number of cans you must buy, then give you a choice of whether you want to put Hunts, Progresso, or Classico on the list for when you swing by the store. We think this is a bit much: at some point, the anal-retentive capabilities of these cooking programs will bog cooks down just as much as sloppily filed index cards from Granny. We'd rather see more recipes and fewer brand names. --Anne Erickson

Amazon.com Product Description
Cook'n with Taste of Home helps you create scrumptious family meals that are easy to make and nutritionally balanced to boot. It features 600 favorite recipes and 500 full-color photographs from Taste of Home magazine. You can also expand the Cook'n electronic cookbook by adding your own family recipes or downloading new ones from the Internet. Easy to use, this program is a real timesaver. Simply input the ingredients you have on hand, and Cook'n suggests a range of recipes. Its recipe manager makes entertaining a snap. Just enter the number of guests, and this clever program calculates the new ingredient amounts for you! Print recipes onto three-by-five cards right from your desktop, so your recipe box never becomes cluttered again. And, when it comes to sharing recipes, just e-mail them with ease.

Cook'n with Taste of Home adds a menu planner, grocery-shopping assistant, and home nutritionist. Build your own weekly and monthly menus. Learn techniques that save time. Compile your grocery list automatically with the handy shopping assistant; it organizes your list by aisle and estimates the cost, saving you time as well as watching out for your money. It even converts measures used in recipes to those used in the store, so you buy just the right sized can! Download your shopping list from Cook'n to your PalmPilot handheld for complete organization. A built-in database holds nutrition facts from the labels of 10,000 food products, so you can determine which products best meet your dietary needs. The home nutritionist also analyzes recipes and menus, including the ones you add!

DVO has been around for nine years and it looks like they will be here for a while longer too because cooking is all they do. Their product is everything I hoped it would be. There are a couple areas that can use improvement but over-all it's very solid. I found out that they offer free upgrades over the Internet every month. They take customer suggestions and make the software better and better each time. I can't complain about that! The price is right too. I am very happy with my purchase.


Some software bugs- but not bad   January 3, 2003
Philip J. Moore (Alma, MI USA)
71 out of 76 found this review helpful

There are two reasons to buy recipe software. The first is for the recipes. I did not buy the software for the recipes and I have not tried any recipes. I bought it for the second reason: to manage my recipes using their software. Generally the software works and it is better than the old DOS based software that I have used for years. There are some problems:

1) When printing, you can not specify how many copies you want. Each time you print, you must go through the whole routine.

2) Once you assign a recipe to a category, it stays. As far as I can tell you can not unassign a category.

3) The documentation is poor. The user has to be willing to experiment to figure out how it works. For example, the "Close" button is really a "Save and Close". If you use the little x in the upper right hand corner, nothing is saved.

4) On my computer, the mouse is deactivated whenever a pop-up box appears. To get my mouse working again, I have to press the tab key. This is true for the print box, the intro box, the exit box, etc...

I e-mailed DVO about problems 2 and 4. For problem 2, I received no response (I sent 3 e-mails on this problem). On Problem 4, I received a prompt response requesting more information. I responded. I waited. After a couple of weeks, I was told that I my problem is unique. It might be my mouse driver. I downloaded a new mouse driver from Microsoft. No change. I have over fifty programs on my system. The only place this problem appears is on DVO software. I may have a system problem, but, something DVO is doing is contributing.

This software is better than my old software. The software does have some nice features such scaling the menu for the number of servings requested and allowing photographs to be attached to recipes. I will continue using it but I have not ceased looking for better program. Maybe DVO will read this and fix the weaknesses.

I never tried the software with my PDA since it does not work with Pocket PC's. It likes the Palm OS.

The menu planner seems to work.

NOTE:

After I posted this review, DVO sent me an e-mail on how to delete categories from recipes. It works, but the documention still is missing this piece of information.


Well Done!   November 8, 2001
April Hewerdine (Terre Haute, IN)
45 out of 47 found this review helpful

I have tried several cooking CDs over the years but didn't like any of them until I got Cook'n. The others were so focused on making the interface pretty that they forgot to make it usable! With Cook'n I can get to my recipes with one click. It is very easy to enter my own recipes too. It took a little getting used to but now I can really fly!

The recipes that come with it are great too. Just about every recipe has a photo which makes a big difference to me when I'm trying to decide what to make. I am usually very critical but this one is a winner--I really like it.


From the Pres...   June 8, 2004
Daniel V. Oaks (Alpine, UT USA)
38 out of 44 found this review helpful

As the President of DVO and developer of this software, I couldn't help but respond to the comments written in the last review...especially since the reviewer said "Maybe DVO will read this and fix the weaknesses."

I will fix the weaknesses as soon as I find one. The truth is, I was quite surprised by some of the claims made regarding the "Close" button really being a "Save and Close" and nothing being saved if you "use the little x in the upper right hand corner."

The guy sounds very nice and he seems sincere so the nicest word I can think of to describe his comments is INACCURATE. It's true, the documentation could be better and allowing the user to specify how many copies he wants to print could be explained better.

However, the other statements are totally incorrect and it is unfortunate because they misrepresent this product. My support people turn around support e-mail messages within 24 hours. They are available via telephone, e-mail, and online chat. My e-mail address is made available to all customers. It can be found on the home page of my web site: www.dvo.com.

I can't think of any other way to help confused people like the author of the last review...who recently converted from DOS to Windows. I guess I could include a thicker User's Guide but many times that confuses people like him even more. I figure I'd rather make myself and my staff available to answer any questions that may come up because no matter how thick the manual, someone will always have a question.

That's my philosophy and it is very different from most of my competitors who do not offer telephone support or the e-mail address to the President and developer.

We also offer a free monthly newsletter, free software updates, additional recipe downloads for free, and much more. If I give away anything else, my wife will have my head!

I hope this helps someone out there. I don't know if it's good for the President and developer to write a review about his own product...but I just couldn't help it. (...)


Love it!   November 9, 2001
Kristy (Salt Lake City, UT)
36 out of 39 found this review helpful

I love the Taste of Home magazine. I have been a subscriber for years but have a hard time finding recipes from past issues. I was THRILLED to see that they finally computerized their recipes. I was so excited to receive the CD...but imagine my surprise when it finally came and I discovered all of the features! I had no idea Cook'n could do so much!! I was like a kid in a candy store!

The software is very easy to use. It does everything I want and more. I highly recommend it to everyone. Kudos DVO. Great job!!