Those of you who regularly read my articles know that I normally write about business uses for the Pocket PC. However, I like to think that I have a life outside of the office. Of course my love of gadgets means that my Pocket PC is often incorporated into my various other hobbies. In this article I take a look at a few programs that support my passion for food and wine.

A COOK NEEDS A SMART COOKBOOK

I was a bit hesitant to use my Pocket PC in the kitchen until I discovered Pocket Cook Deluxe, an electronic cookbook program and the most versatile application reviewed in this article. Pocket Cook Deluxe does more than store recipes; it takes advantage of the Pocket PC's calculating, sorting, and searching capabilities to create a smart cookbook.

Pocket Cook Deluxe includes a classification system that allows you to search for recipes by cuisine, food type (e.g., breakfast, beverage, meat, cookies, etc.), and/or ingredients. When you view a recipe, Pocket Cook Deluxe lists the ingredients at the top of the screen and the cooking instructions at the bottom. You can also choose to view either one alone.

Each recipe includes the number of servings. If you change this number, Pocket Cook Deluxe will recalculate the quantities of the ingredients. Unfortunately, the current version of the program does not convert the units of measurement when you resize a recipe. For example, if you triple the number of servings in a recipe that calls for one teaspoon of salt, Pocket Cook Deluxe will indicate you need three teaspoons instead of one tablespoon. The folks at Pocket Cook Deluxe tell me that this will be changed in a new version expected later this year. The existing version of Pocket Cook Deluxe supports metric units as well, and as readers outside the USA are well aware, the more logical metric system needs no such conversions.

Pocket Cook Deluxe comes bundled with a database of 4000 recipes as well as a companion program that runs on your desktop PC. I found that it is much easier to add new recipes using the desktop companion program. Not only can you use the keyboard to enter recipes, but you can cut and paste text and import recipes using a couple of standard file formats. This makes copying a recipe from a Web page a snap.

Unfortunately, I found the synchronization feature between the two programs to be a bit confusing. For example, despite its name, the menu item "Resync PC to Pocket PC" actually replaces the data on the Pocket PC and should only be used once. Also, the default recipe list on the desktop is quite large, but to conserve space only the first 100 recipes are transferred to the Pocket PC unless you mark more. Finally, you must open ActiveSync on your desktop, go to its Options menu, and make sure that Pocket Access is checked before Pocket Cook Deluxe will synchronize data between the Pocket PC and the desktop program. All of these minor issues are discussed on the Pocket Cook Deluxe Web site's frequently asked questions (FAQ) page.

I'm very impressed with all the features packed into Pocket Cook Deluxe. The program also includes a screen of nutritional information for each recipe. In the current version, that information must be entered by the user for any new recipes the user creates, although it is already provided with each of the 4000 recipes that come with the program. However, the company indicated to me that they intend to add the ability in a future release of Pocket Cook Deluxe for the program to automatically calculate the caloric, fat, and other nutritional content of a recipe from the listed ingredients.

Pocket Cook Deluxe also includes a built-in shopping list. Tapping on an item in the ingredients list adds it to the shopping list. The program will even combine the quantities of an ingredient that was added to the list from multiple recipes. While this is a nice idea, without a more complete list, Pocket Cook Deluxe does not make an ideal shopping aid. That's because most people also shop for items that are not part of any recipe (such as soap or paper towels.)

Pocket Cook Deluxe lets you view the ingredients of a recipe (top) and the cooking instructions (bottom).