If you like cooking, you're going to love Living Cookbook, one of the most complete cooking-related programs I've ever reviewed.
The thing that really marks Living Cookbook out from its competitors is the sheer breadth of features. It covers just about every aspect of home cooking, from browsing the Internet for new ideas to planning your meals, scheduling your cooking and designing your shopping lists. The whole Living Cookbook is contained in a simple-to-use interface that anyone familiar with the Office Suite of tools should have no problems navigating.
Living Cookbook has a great help file, as well as offline tutorials and a host of online tools to help you get the most out of the program. There are also examples in each feature area, so you know exactly how you should be using the program. It comes bundled with plenty of recipes, sample shopping lists, suggested websites (for use with the in-built browser) and nutritional values, but it goes without saying that you can add or modify any of Living Cookbook's multiple areas to fully customize it.
Living Cookbook's configuration options are also very complete, as are the fully customizable display options. Unfortunately, although the program gave me the option to change measurements into metric, the setting didn't seem to 'stick', and continued to show me recipes in US measurements and auto-suggest ounces and pounds.
Beyond this little issue, Living Cookbook was a pleasure to use, and is useful even if you never add your own material. The options are so varied that it might take you a while to truly investigate the program, but it a serious piece of software that any enthusiastic cook will appreciate.
If you take your cooking seriously, Living Cookbook is the program for you.
