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Even for a die-hard gadgeteer like myself, this is just too cool.  I bought
Sierra Home's 4-pack that has Master Cook, Land Designer, Print Artist, and
the Collier's Encyclopedia in it.  This cost $49.99 at SAM's.  I saw just
Master Cook alone at Best Buy for $39.99.  I can't tell you about the print
program and the encyclopedia -- haven't had time to try them out -- but I've
poked around in Land Designer and it's pretty powerful and nifty but what's
WAY COOL is Master Cook.
 
This program comes with several cookbooks of its own from a big basic book,
through "Family Favorites" and a Famous Chef's book to a Bartender's Guide,
but what's especially nice is that you can input your own recipes and make
your own cookbook.  You can choose to view theirs and yours in several
layouts, using any fonts you have at hand.  You can print these out, too.
 
You can do searches within any cookbook (within the program) with a fairly
sophisticated but amazingly easy-to-use search engine that allows you to
eliminate ingredients or insist that something be in a recipe title or
whatever.  It's a little problematic getting wheat out of the recipes because
they can hide under other names:  flour, cake mix, brownie mix, cereals,
cookies, cracker crumbs etc -- but that's really not the point.  Probably you
want those wheaten recipes in most cases, so that you can adapt them.  The
real point is that if you have crab and asparagus on hand and want to know
what you can do with it, this software will do that for you.
 
Even better, this program uses the USDA's information to generate nutritional
information on the recipes, including all the stuff you always see on the
label, and more.  Okay, so it doesn't have tapioca flour or potato starch
flour or even bean flour, but you can approximate these things by "Linking"
them to other ingredients (I tied bean flour to chickpeas, tapioca flour to
tapioca, and potato starch flour to cornstarch, since they're pretty close).
You can even make one of your recipes into an Ingredient for use in other
recipes.  So, for example, I've got Bette Hagman's GF flour mix and my own
bread mix in there and the program understands, now, when I call for 1 cup of
GF flour or 4 cups Linda's Bread Mix.
 
I haven't even begun to explore what this program can do with nutritional
analysis of whole meals and menu plans, or scaling of recipes for parties
down to individual servings, or the generation of shopping list, but I have
looked at its email capabilities, and that's pretty cool too.  If anyone else
out there -- now or in the future -- uses Master Cook and has an Internet/Web
access and wants to exchange recipes in Master Cook format, please let me
know.  I'd even be interested in maintaining a Master Cook library on my web
site (or better yet, talking Sierra into putting it on their web site).
 
You can visit the Master Cook site at:
  http://www.sierra.com/sierrahome/mastercook/
 
Linda Blanchard "The Gluten-Free Gadgeteer"
http://www2.basinlink.com/us/mindpla/main.htm
Midland TX USA