Cooking Light recipes are an excellent base for cooking. Entering recipes by hand is easy. Importing recipes in MasterCook format from the Serra site is simple. Importing recipes in text format is a bit more difficult but the tool for editing is good.

It provides a number of useful features - meals, meal plans for a period of time, shopping lists, pantry items expiration dates, a wine selector, comprehensive nutritional analysis including exchanges for diabetics - as well as photos, cooking tips etc. I did not load the pictures onto my PC; the program handles the absence with style ... a generic, graytoned picture.

The basic print format is satisfactory with two-sides options; I have not yet experimented with one's ability to manipulate the output.

What features do I wish it had? An ability to export the added ingredients list, a cheese list equivalent to the wine list, and a better handling of alternate ingredients, nutritional analysis for individual family members, purchasable add-ins for other cookbooks, ratings of ingredients by brand name or variety (not all tea is equal, for example)

What features do I especially like? The freedom to use my own categories and rating system, the ability to search for recipes using ingredients I have on hand (useful only AFTER one loads the data which is simple but time consuming), the thoroughness of the nutritional analysis, the arrangement of recipes and menus for easy access, the intuitive interface so one can learn the system by doing ...

This is a software package that makes on-line cookbooks use the computer capabilities for a tangible advantage rather than simply computerizing the paper cookbooks 'cause the computer's there.

"excellent for any cook"
This is the only cooking CD-ROM to date that I have purchased, and it is well-worth the money. The number and variety of recipes is astounding, the directions are easy to follow, and the treats are healthy! The option I love is that of entering your own recipes and analyzing them for nutritional value. Have you ever wondered how healthy that broccoli gratin was? Well, simply enter the ingredients into the sheet and you'll know (without having to hunt up the nutritional information for the individual ingredients on your own)!

"5-Star Product"
This is a 5-Star product, even though I have about 1/10 of a star question concerning the import/export function. I originally purchased an earlier version of this product in a software store for about ... in 1995. I learned to use it with a little trial and error, and between 1995 and 1997 I wrote my own cookbook as emotional therapy during law school. I love the ability for the program to add ingredients, since I often cook with obscure items I find in the gourmet shops. Simply read the nutritional analysis on the label and add the item with its nutritional values to your master list! I created over 200 recipes with nutritional analysis (adjusting recipes for not more than 30% fat), printed them, bound them and gave them away as Christmas gifts. What better way to preserve those old family favorites??? I just ordered version 6.0 and look forward to trying it. While the 4,000 recipes might be of minor interest, I bought this product to hold my own. Printing your recipes or the whole cookbook you create from Mastercook is easy with a number of recipe designs built into the program. But what I really want in the new version is the ability to convert the MasterCook Cookbook designs into Word or Adobe formats for electronic publishing. In the original version, the translation was possible, but I lost all the formatting. I am hoping the new version can do this seamlessly. You will love this product. Use it an be healthy.

"Excellent resource"
I just received this item and immediately loaded it onto my computer. The first thing that I noticed is that it will take a little bit of time to learn to navigate through it. I consider myself pretty computer savvy so I was put off at first. But it is just like any other program, you have to play around and then you will figure it out. It has a fairly large User Manual and I have been looking through that. This program is so extensive! It is absolutely wonderful. I think that it will do ANYTHING!

If you are a person who has to count calories, fat grams, cholesterol etc then you must get this! It gives you any information that you need to know. The best part is that it already has so much information stored into the program. I entered some of my own recipes and it calculated the nutritional information for each recipe. There are many recipes that I have had for a long time that I had no idea what the fat grams, calories etc would be and it figures it right up for you! Plus, if there is a product that isn't in the program's database and you can add that product's information. If you add that product to a recipe it will take the information that you entered to calculate the nutritional value of the recipe.

Another great feature for families of all sizes is the recipe scaling. I have such a hard time cooking for my husband and myself. We always have huge portions of leftovers. With this program it will automatically scale the recipe for two people. Or if I am going to have company I can scale the recipe larger so that I have enough. It is such a pain to do that manually. This makes it easy.

OH! and of course the recipes! There are so many! You may not ever have to buy another cookbook! For [the price] you can't beat that! It is money well spent for anyone looking for new recipes and other excellent features.

There are plenty of other things that this program does that I haven't even been able to get to. It will be fun learning them all and playing with all of the new things that I can do with the program. Now, if I can just get it to cook the meals.

"Arm yourself with a great tool"
Dieting is very tough. Why not arm yourself with a great tool. Mastercook provides nutritional information in a snap.

Mastercook can help those who count calories, those who count food exchanges, and is helpful for Weight Watchers Folks gather information so they can then determine their points. I have owned several versions of MasterCook. This version is a great update to a super program. This will enable you to store recipes, and catagorize them as you wish. You will be able to email recipes to other people online. MasterCook comes with great recipes, and many of them have photos. MasterCook will help you generate shopping lists, saving you time, and it will help you scale recipes.

Another aspect about this program that is extremely helpful is if you enjoy mailing lists, there are tons out there. I bet you have noticed that many people send their stuff in Mastercook format. You can email straight from Mastercook, and IMPORT recipes as well.