So it’s pretty well-known that you can save a lot of money if you cook dinner at home rather than go out to restaurants.  In the spirit of saving some money, I decided to cook dinner at home every day this month.  One major problem -- my recipes are a mess.  They’re in files all over my computer, in my email, on scraps of paper that have been torn out of magazines or handwritten by friends and family.  If I was going to make a good effort to cook at home, I had to get this under control.   

With the help of Google, I went on a mission to find free recipe management software.  After trying several duds, which I won’t mention by name, I found Recipe Center 5.2.  (FYI - I am in no way affiliated with this software or the company that makes it.)  It’s a pretty simple software but does exactly what I needed – namely, to help me organize my recipes.

Features I Liked:

• It’s Free!!
• You can add recipes with ingredients, procedures, and an image
• You can add recipes to your “basket” to create shopping lists
• You can change numbers of servings in a recipe and the ingredients are auto-resized
• You can add keywords to recipes to help in categorizing and searching through your recipes.

Downsides

• The interface isn’t always intuitive.  (Ex: took me some time to figure out how to add an image to a recipe – when you’re editing a recipe look for the browse button – there’s no other label.)
• In the free version, you may see ads at the bottom of the screen.  (When I downloaded it, the ads never loaded so I just saw a small blank box which was great!)
• There’s no way to record calorie or nutrition information unless you add it to the general instructions section for a recipe.

Bottom Line:  If you have the money to invest in more expensive recipe management software with more bells and whistles, go ahead.  But if you’re looking for a free software that does the job, Recipe Center is your solution! 

If anyone out there uses any recipe software that they love, let me know!