The Electronic Recipe Manager is a state-of-the-art recipe management system. ERM has many features that make it one of the most functional recipe managers available. Users can add recipes with the click of a button using the superior parsing technology available in the storage bin utility, search throughout the database using an advanced search engine, maintain an electronic cabinet of on-hand items, create automatic shopping lists, resize recipes, and much, much more! Combine the expanded functionality with the simple interface and what you get is one of the most functional and user-friendly recipe managers available.

Introduction

When a user opens Electronic Recipe Manager, the Main Screen will appear, as seen in Figure 1. From the Main Screen, a user can choose to add recipes, search the existing database using the ERM search engine, maintain their cabinets or create menus, recipe groups and shopping lists. The first step is to choose the recipe type that the user wishes to work with.

Figure 1: Main Screen

Add New Recipes

Clicking the Add button located on the Main Screen will cause the New Recipe screen to appear, allowing the entry of a new recipe, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: New Recipe Screen

The data that can be entered for all recipe types is very similar, including Title, Category, Rating, Yield, Notes, Source, Cuisine/Origin, Prep Time, Cook Time, Ingredients and Directions. However, some of these fields do not need to be utilized when adding drink or other types of recipes (i.e., Yield, Prep Time, Cook Time). The only required field to enter a new recipe is the Title.

Clicking on Reset under the “Ingredients” or “Directions” tabs will delete all currently added Ingredients or Directions and allow you to start from scratch. Clicking on the Re-Order arrows under the “Ingredients” or “Directions” tabs will allow you to move a selected Ingredient or Direction up or down in the list.

After users enter an ingredient, the cabinet drop-down box may be populated with several choices that the ingredient may already be in the cabinet as. This works by gathering similar items already in the cabinet so users can choose what this item is most like. Users can scroll through all of the possible cabinet choices by using the arrow keys. If there is not a suitable choice in the drop-down box, users can type their own entry. However, this new entry will not appear in the cabinet until the user refreshes the cabinet through the menu option Tools -> Cabinet Tools –> Refresh Cabinet.

Recipes can be marked private. This has absolutely no impact on any feature in ERM itself, but is necessary to protect any family secret recipes when using ERMster. Simply check off the Private checkbox and ERMster will not share this recipe with any users.

The newest version of ERM also allows users to store complementary recipes (recipes that would go well with this one in a meal), an image of the prepared item, and the nutritional information. The complementary information is available on the Other Info tab of ERM while the nutritional information has its own tab.

Figure 3: New Recipe - Other Information

To add complementary recipes, click the Add button under the complementary window. This will bring up a search window to find any/all recipes you want to store as complementary. In the example, the frosting associated with a specific type of brownies is listed under the Brownie recipe. You can also remove recipes by highlighting them and clicking the associated Del button.

Similarly, an image can be added/removed to the recipe using the Add/Del buttons. When adding an image to a recipe, the file dialog box appears so that the proper image can be found. Any *.jpg, *.gif, *.ico, *.cur, or *.bmp file should work.

Figure 4: New Recipe - Nutritional Information

The Amount or Portion of the Recipe field is used to store what amount of the recipe was used to determine the nutrient information on the right. There are several standard nutrients that are included in the list, but others can be added simply by using the text boxes and entering the nutrient they wish to store.

Resize Recipe

See Search Existing Recipes - Edit/Copy – Resize Recipe

View/Print

See Search Existing Recipes – View/Print

Wipe Clean

See Search Existing Recipes - Wipe Clean

Clear

The Clear button beside the Ingredients and Directions sections can be used to wipe out the current data for an ingredient or direction.

Storage Bin

Click on the Storage Bin button in the New Recipe screen to open the Storage Bin (located in top right corner), as seen in Figure 3. Simply copy the text from any e-mail or web site and paste it into the Storage Bin. Then highlight the block of text within the Storage Bin you wish to transfer. For example, to transfer the ingredients, highlight the group of ingredients and click the Ingredients button. As a result, all of the ingredients will automatically be transferred into the New Recipe screen. The same can be done with all other recipe sections such as Title, Yield, Directions, etc.

Adding New Measurements to ERM Transfer Tool/Storage Bin

If a specific ingredient measure does is not transferring correctly, the problem is more than likely that ERM does not know what the measurement is. ERM has a user maintainable list of drop-down choices that can be maintained for all measurements. For information on updating this list,