Home Cookin uses a simple tabbed interface that is easy to operate while providing all the features you use most. Within minutes you will be adding your own recipes, preparing grocery lists, and planning your meals for the upcoming weeks. Each screen is optimized to make every operation as effortless as possible, while not getting bogged down with seldom used options.

You will feel right at home with the familiar style of a traditional cookbook. You can create as many chapters as you wish, and organize your recipes into the chapters you want them in. Home Cookin will keep everything sorted alphabetically so you can quickly browse through your collection, and find your favorites easily.

All recipes are immediately available in a single collection, so you can access any recipe instantly without having to load or save different cookbooks. And with support for over 2 billion recipes, you'll always have space to add more recipes.

Most cooking programs force you to use a "fill in the blanks" approach when you add new recipes. This limits flexibility and complicates recipe entry. Many common recipe conventions such as "2 to 3 cups" are difficult to accommodate and make you reformat the recipe to fit the programs available fields.

Home Cookin uses free-form text entry for easier use and greater flexibility. When you add or edit a recipe, you just start typing. No complicated fields, no limits on the length or number of ingredients, and no restrictive entry rules. Format the recipe as you wish, check spelling with the built-in spell checker, or resize the ingredients for any number of servings.

Home Cookin also provides additional support for informational text such as food glossaries, conversion charts, health recommendations, and other reference material. There is no need to force this information into restrictive records intended for recipes.

For even greater flexibility, Home Cookin lets you include a photo with each of your recipes. These can be used to show charts, how-to information, or simply to make your recipe more appealing.

Pictures can be used by themselves when no recipe text is needed, and the photo option is invisible for those recipes that have no pictures.

Thousands of free recipes can be found on web pages, newsgroups, and various mailing lists. You can easily add these to your collection by importing them into Home Cookin. Most standard formats are supported including:

Mastercook Meal-Master Big-Oven Living Cookbook Now You're Cooking

Cookbook Wizard From Scratch From My Kitchen Recipe Processor and Computer Chef

Recipes that do not adhere to one of these standard formats can be imported manually, or you can copy/paste text into the recipe editor for sources that have complex or unusual formatting. If you want to share recipes with friends or family, you can export recipes in a variety of formats including Mastercook and Meal-Master. You can even email recipes directly from Home Cookin.

While you can usually find a recipe quickly by browsing through the index, it is often faster and easier to locate recipes using the Find feature.

Find recipes by title, ingredients, or directions
Find recipes based on the ingredients you have available
Find recipes with similar ingredients (i.e. walnuts, pecans, OR almonds)
Exclude recipes you are not interested in
Search all chapters, or just the current chapter

As your recipe collection grows, you may end up with many similar recipes. This is especially common when importing recipes from public sources. Recipes may be renamed, ingredients reorganized, or the directions edited for clarity. But the recipes may otherwise be very similar.

The duplicate finder performs a statistical analysis of each recipe, and can locate similar recipes even when words are misspelled, ingredients or directions are in different orders, or the recipe titles are different. Once the similar recipes are located, you are given the opportunity to compare the matches and delete the ones you no longer want.

Home Cookin provides a variety of print formats so you can take your recipes with you. Print your favorites when you're ready to prepare them, or make simple cookbooks for your family and friends.

Print to standard 3x5, 4x6, or 5x8 index cards
Print to individual cards or multiple cards on a single page
Support for precut index card stock (Avery 5388, 5389, 8386, etc.)
Print small booklets
Print letter size pages (8-1/2 x 11) for simple cookbooks

The Save PDF feature lets you select recipes for a cookbook then save them to a PDF file on your hard drive. You can print this PDF file, or send it to friends as an easy way to share your favorite recipes.

For special gifts you can upload the PDF file to a book printer like lulu.com and have your cookbook professionally bound. Order as many copies as you need for friends and family.

See the Personalized Cookbooks page for more information.

The meal calendar makes it easy to plan your upcoming meals. Locate your desired recipes, then add them to the calendar. Add personal notes if you plan on eating out, to show holidays or special occasions, or to reference recipes in other cookbooks. When you are ready to prepare the meal, you can access or print the recipe quickly from the meal calendar.

You can plan your meals days, weeks, or years in advance. Arrange meals by breakfast, lunch, dinner or any other hour of the day, with no limits on the number of meals each day. If your plans change, you can easily move the meals to new dates, or copy meals to additional dates if you have leftovers.

The Home Cookin grocery manager will make quick work of preparing your grocery shopping lists. Start a new list, select the items you need, and print. A cost estimate is calculated as you select each item, so you'll know ahead of time how much you'll be spending on your groceries. The printed list is compact and sorted by store and location to make your shopping trip as easy as possible.

The Find function lets you locate items quickly, and you can easily add or edit item items when needed. In addition, each item can have a default quantity so your frequently purchased items are selected automatically with each new list.

While some recipe programs generate grocery lists automatically from selected recipes, you end up with many items in your list that you already have on hand. Automatic lists also do not account for recipes in external cookbooks, household items, cold cereals, fruits, and many other items for which there are no recipes.

Home Cookin avoids these hassles by letting you select your grocery items manually. Your list contains only the items you need, and you don't have to remove or disregard ingredients you already have on hand. You will actually compile your list faster and with more accuracy than any automatic list.