I purchased this software after researching the many software titles on the market for recipe storage.

I found this software to be affordable, and most user friendly. I am not a novice computer user, and was able to understand and complete the entering of my own recipes into the program. However, a thorough knowledge of how to back up information is required or one will have to re-enter all the recipes, because they will be lost if not backed up.

With that said, I was amazed that I could enter as many of my own recipes as I wanted, and once all entered, I could easily print them off onto decorative recipe cards to produce a completely organized and user friendly recipe box. Also included in the program is 600 + recipes from the TASTE OF HOME MAGAZINE already entered. All of those recipes use everyday type of ingredients, nothing fancy or nothing I can't find at my local supermarket. I can also, with a click of the mouse print off any recipe that had been entered to quickly give a recipe to a friend or colleague, without the pain of handwriting the recipes requested.

Another great thing about this software, which I have had to use a time or two, is being able to enter a few ingredients which I have on hand, but don't know exactly what I'm going to do with it, and having the program search all recipes that call for those ingredients and list them out for me to review. I am able to highlight my recipes by menu and plan the week's or month's menus and have it produce for me a detailed shopping list which I can either print off, or better yet, download directly into my palm pilot for the trip to the market whenever it fits into my schedule. I am also able to download recipes into the palm, as well. If you need to increase or decrease the number of servings to any recipe, all you need to do is enter that information, and the software calculates the new recipe for you!

Upon starting the program there are little tips from Taste of Home from how to make a better pie crust to
how to fold napkins like the pro's. You can either watch these tips which change each time you start the program, or there is a way to turn the tips off so you are not having to waste your time until they are done.

The technical support is awesome, as updates are done on the versions you own, you click web updates, and they are automatically downloaded onto your computer for free. There is a newsletter you can subscribe too that will continue to post new recipes each month that you can download directly into your program with a click of the mouse. Within that same newsletter is a link to search the archived monthly recipes so you can download these as well.

I also have a subscription to the TASTE OF HOME magazine, and this software is exactly what I expected it to be. High quality, fantastic pictures of the completed dishes are available for most of the recipes and the option that you can download your own pictures of your own dishes, as well.
They've thought of every detail I need in a recipe software program I can think of.

Recommended: Yes