Look and Taste

I could do my traditional review where I'm highlighting the good parts the bad parts the "iPhoneness" to it etc... but in this case I think a little anecdotal story of how it helped saved face might be more appropriate.

[img id="img_00085-200x300.png"]When ever I'm in a mad rush to cook a thrilling and exciting meal that will delight the taste buds of my family, I try to have a quick surf on the net for a recipe. Invariably this takes far too much time because the number of small sites with one or two recipes and then printing it out or writing it up becomes more hassle than it's worth. That's where these types of apps come into their own. I have had other similar ones on my phone before, this one however will replace them.

Being able to stand in my kitchen and just look at my phone for a quick and useful recipe is great. I was in the middle of making an apple crumble, (as you do) and realized that because I was making it from memory I was missing the correct quantities of some ingredients. It was great to be able to just pull out my phone and find within a few clicks the ingredients and their quantities.

Even better than that was the ability to show off my iPhone at a dinner party. I was the only iPhone user there, and they were proclaiming that really the iPhone was useless to 'normal' people (whatever that means). I was able to say "well there is even an app for cooking and recipes that everyone could use".

She disagreed.

She said "there's no way" - and claimed that she would "any day" prefer her cookbooks.

I set a challenge. Fine - give us both 2 ingredients and let's see who gets a recipe faster.

Long story short - I won.

In the time it took me to find several different and interesting ideas with the given ingredients, she had walked to the kitchen, gotten a book from the shelf and began to look at the index.

What I'm trying to write is that, applications like these, that add serious functionality to what is essentially a phone, is where the market should really expand. When I refer to my phone, I say "it's not a phone folks - it's a lifestyle".

This application is usable on its own or you can create an account that links in with the website so you are able to save your favorites too which is great. There is an extensive glossary with videos, text and images to support the item you are looking at. The featured section has recipes that have been voted for by the community for being really great, or easy to make. These also have videos (250 step-by-step) to accompany them. This really is a major selling point of the app. Those videos are such a great inclusion to the app that it really means it has so much use for those of us who maybe have slightly less cooking ability than others.

There are categories to start you off, from desserts *yum* to Italian, Asian and breads. Everything is searchable and if you just want inspiration they include new recipes weekly in the featured section. The interface is so clean and uncluttered. The colours of the interface are really well thought out. Another nice thing is the measurements are in Imperial, or you can click that and it puts it in metric.

Each recipe has the prep time, cooking time, difficulty, health factor, ingredients, what kind of cuisine it is and how many it serves.

Overall this application is really jam packed with features. The weekly updated recipes mean that you will never be short of ideas. I have looked at other similar apps and this one will be able to replace them all. It is pretty steep at $9.99 so maybe try the free version first to see how often you use it. I do think it's a keeper.

No excuses lads - go make your girlfriend, wife, mom a nice meal. Happy Cooking!