What is your favorite Computer Menu/Recipe/Shopping Program?

[Tirza]

I received a reference to Accuchef from someone.
Can you give your favorite programs and why you like them?
I want to have a really good program that will adapt to and accomodate raw recipes, that will give nutritional values of foods as entered, that will allow for menu planning and make up a shopping list from it.
I need to be able to sync the shopping list at least to my PALM OS PDA.

[fuzzywater]

I've been using Mastercook for years now, since version 3 or something. It works nicely and seems to have all the features you mentioned. It does do nutritional info. As far as that, it can be finicky due to the sometimes unusual ingredients in raw dishes (i.e. agave), BUT you can manually enter the nutritional info for those ingredients and then you're all set for using it in the future. Also, it is picky about HOW you enter the info. For example, "soaked almonds" confuses the nutritional info, but if you change it to "almonds, soaked" then you're good to go. You can also make "synonyms," so that "soaked almonds" gets associated as the same thing as "almonds, soaked." It has menu making and shopping list capabilities, although I have to admit I haven't really tried those out. And versions 7+ all have the ability to transfer info to a palm pilot. I think v.9 is most current; you can often find it at places like Best Buy and Circuit City, etc. I bought my last copy for around $20.

Best of luck!

[fiddler]

FWIW, I own livingcoookbook...

I used to use it early on to store recipes and compute the macronutrients (carb/fat/protein) percentages and total calories. It works really well and is recommended by Doug Graham's site -- www.foodnsport.com (http://www.foodnsport.com)

However, I rarely use it anymore...