Move over KFC

What’s for supper tonight? Digital Fried Chicken.

Being a professional foodie isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Sure, I get to play in the kitchen, impress my hungry friends with the results and get paid for it. I can legitimately business expense cookbooks, food magazines, and sometimes even groceries. But keeping track of the recipes I create, where they originated, how I changed them, what needs tweaking… well, it can get a little much at times. And I have some bad habits to break.

Without knowing recipe development was a career option, I used to scribble notes in the margins of my cookbooks, write more suitable ingredients beside the lack lustre ones, or even put a big black X through particularly egregious offerings. I’ve even been known to tear out entire pages — Bye-bye Liver Sausage Bologna Loaf. The notes, sometimes rather scathing, were only for me and if I couldn’t duplicate my amazing results, it didn’t matter. I’d just fiddle with another recipe.

But editors want recipes specific enough to give readers the intended results. They don’t like ingredient lists that read like this:

• 3 pounds chicken (try thighs, no skin)
• 1 tsp cumin (bland, add more)
• 1/4 tsp cayenne (too hot, try less or another pepper)
• 4 cardamon pods (yuck! far too harsh, try upping the cumin and coriander)
• 8 whole cloves (are they nuts? try 2 and add more if needed)
• what? no turmeric? try adding 1/2 tsp
• what about a vegetarian version with cauliflower and potatoes? chicken and cauliflower with no potatoes for low-carbers?

While I learned to be more accurate with my notetaking, my recipes-in-process got misfiled, rendered illegible by grease spatter or tossed out during clean up. In a misguided attempt at over-organization, I turned to the word processor, which simply transferred my paper problem into a computer problem. With the click of a button I could end up with multiple versions of a recipe without any indication which was the “right” version. And I still couldn’t decide how to file them efficiently. Is Chicken Pot Pie primarily a chicken dish or casserole?

Now, it’s time for the big guns – a database. Thanks to fellow food writer Christine Gable, I’ve a software solution for my organizational woes — CookWare Deluxe — and it’s courtesy of DigitalFriedChicken.

Love the name. Love the price (at $24.95 it’s a fraction of the cost of a word processor). And with a little luck, I’ll love the results.