Viewing either PxRecipes or MyPxRecipes from your computer screen, you will see that the screen is divided in half, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B


On the desktop, your screen is divided in half. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The left side of the screen shows all the available recipes, and the right side of the screen shows a list of the ingredients, preparation time, servings, rating, notes, day, meal, and source for the selected recipe. The left side of the screen can be customized by selecting List Options from the Options menu. You can have up to five sorted columns. Personally, I found a single column listing recipes was the clearest and most usable. The day and meal fields are to plan menus by day of the week and meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner). All fields can be edited by selecting the edit button at the bottom the screen.

Recipes can be added to the databases by clicking on the new button and then either copying and pasting the recipe into a new recipe, typing the recipe into a new recipe, or importing an existing one as either a comma delimited or tab delimited file. In testing out this program I was successful at both copying a recipe from the Web and pasting the information into the appropriate fields and typing in a new recipe. I tried to import a comma-delimited recipe from Notepad. I was able to import the title and the ingredients for a recipe; however, in order to add any other field, I had to add a comma for each of the 25-ingredient fields I did not use. I found this feature cumbersome.

From either the PxRecipes or MyPxRecipes database, you can perform several actions, such as adding a new recipe, editing or deleting the current recipe, or cloning a recipe. Cloning allows you to make a copy of the recipe, make changes, and then save it with a different name. Since the databases are not relational, if you were to modify a recipe in the PxRecipes that you had already copied to MyPxRecipes, the change would not immediately be changed in MyPxRecipes. The change would occur on the next synchronization.

I find that one of the most useful features of the program is the ability to copy the ingredients of a selected recipe to PxShoppingList. I particularly liked the fact that it added the ingredients exactly. Thus, if a recipe called for a half cup yogurt, one of the items on the shopping list would be one half cup yogurt. This is useful when shopping because it lets me know that I can buy a small carton of yogurt rather than a large one. Information about the recipe, such as when it was created or modified, is also available.

The search function for Pocket Recipes is very powerful. There are several types of lookups that can be executed from either of the two recipe databases. The quickest and easiest is a search on the first letter of the title. That's good if you happen to remember the exact title of the recipe (give me a break!). I found the advanced search more valuable. You reach the search function in one of three ways: from the keyboard, Control-F; from the file menu, by choosing search from the Record menu; or from the icon bar, by clicking on the binoculars icon. Using the Search dialog box, pictured in Figure B, you can search for specific words in specific fields.