I have prepared a special bonus cookbook for Christmas. If you are in need of inspiration for your Christmas dinner, download your bonus cookbook of 15 delicious Christmas recipes in three easy steps:
Display the Browser tab of Shop’NCook Home, Menu or Pro software. If you don’t have yet the software, you can download it here for a free 45-day trial.
Click on the link to recipe download pages and input the bonus cookbook access code “XMAS” (without the quotes).
Click on “Christmas recipes” to install the cookbook.
The recipes are ready to be added to your meal plan and your shopping lists.
For a ready-made Christmas menu, see also the “Example of Complete Menu” in the Library tab of the Calendar.
Users ask me sometime to add a pantry manager to Shop’NCook software. So here is the news flash:
Shop’NCook has had a hidden pantry manager for years.
OK, now I see you become a little sceptic. I mean, why would I hide such a useful feature in my software?
The truth is, when I wrote this feature, I didn’t realize it was a pantry! For lack of a better term, I called it: “The list of items that are automatically deselected” - which is an apt description of what it does but that doesn’t help understanding what it’s useful for. That is, until a customer pointed out to me that it is actually a pantry.
The pantry manager is a very useful feature and I warmly encourage you to use it, if you aren’t already. It lets you keep track of the ingredients you have at home so that they don’t get added to the shopping list. Without it, you get a lot of things you don’t need to buy on your shopping list - like water, salt, pepper, etc. - and have to remove them manually each time. The pantry manager is still rudimentary: if you would like it to do more, let me know!
I tell you below how to set it up, what it does and the best way to use it.
As a follow up to yesterday’s post on sending your grocery lists to your mobile phone, here are below Shop’NCook e-mail settings for some main providers. I have written when the settings have been confirmed by users. If you know other working settings or if you confirm some unconfirmed ones, leave a comment below. I will be updating the list regularly.
You enter the e-mail settings in the E-Mail tab of the Preferences. If you cannot find the correct settings for your configuration, try the solution proposed here that should work for everybody.
Important note: After modifying the e-mail settings, you must restart Shop’NCook before sending e-mails.
In the last post, I published a video showing a Shop’NCook grocery list on my iPhone. There seems to be some confusion about this - somebody even sent his grocery list to my iPhone!
Anyway, in case you are wondering, you don’t need an iPhone - or a Blackberry, an Android or other smart phone - to get your grocery list on your phone.
Shop’NCook Pro comes with an e-mail feature that makes it really easy to send grocery lists to your phone. It isn’t either a new feature. Actually, it had this capability from the very beginning, - even when it wasn’t usual to read e-mails on mobile phones, - as I wrote Shop’NCook partly because I wanted to be able to send my grocery lists to my husband. But that’s another story…
So what do you need to have your grocery list on your mobile phone?
If your phone supports e-mails, it’s very easy. You just need to set up Shop’NCook to send e-mails to your phone.
If it doesn’t support e-mails but has Java (and chances are that it does), you can sign-up for a browser-based e-mail account like GMail, set up Shop’NCook to send the grocery lists to your new account and install Opera browser for mobiles to view your grocery lists.
In both cases, you get a practical shopping list with checkboxes that you can mark as you go.
Now, even if your phone does not support Java - or if it does, but installing Opera sounds a bit too complicated, - don’t despair! You can probably still have your grocery list sent to your mobile phone very easily. You see, most mobile carriers have a free “SMS gateway”, which takes e-mails and delivers them to your phone as SMS text messages. For example, if your carrier is AT&T, you send an e-mail to your-10-digit-phone-number@txt.att.net - now your have to replace your-10-digit-phone-number by your actual phone number - and receive it as SMS on your phone. Just ask your carrier for the e-mail address you should use (or check this list).
I have put together the video below to illustrate the steps from finding a recipe on the internet to having a store-ready grocery list on your iPhone.
And YES, you can send your grocery lists to your iPhone with Shop’NCook - a question I get often. I’ll write more about the iPhone in a future post.
Don’t just watch the video: download the software if you haven’t already - it’s free for a 45-day trial - and go through the steps. See for yourself how easy it is to plan your meals.
I hope you like it! After trying it, I’d love it if you let me know how you did in the comments below.
Shop’NCook has been selected as member of the month of the educational software cooperative! Isn’t it great? Anyway, have a look at ESC - you’ll find great educational software there.
Update July 11, 2009: The issue is now fixed on the US versions of Shop’NCook Home, Menu and Pro. I will update the international versions and Shop’NCook Reader in a few days - meanwhile use the workaround below.
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Java for Mac OS X 10.5 can cause Shop’NCook to crash. I am working on it and hopefully will publish a compatible version of Shop’NCook in a few days. Meanwhile, Shop’NCook users should wait before installing the latest Java update.
Update June 30, 2009: Mmm, the latest Java update seems to be protecting against very serious security vulnerabilities. Forget what I wrote above - do install the update as soon as possible, then applies the easy workaround below to continue using Shop’NCook.
If you have already installed it, here is a simple workaround:
Open the Java Preferences in folder Applications/Utilities .
Drag J2SE 1.4.2, 32-bit at the top of the choices for Java applications.
That’s it! By setting Java 1.4.2 as your preferred Java Virtual Machine, Shop’NCook will work again like before.
Likely usual, I opened my to-do list this morning… and found that for the first time in months, I had reached the bottom of my list.
Before starting on my next big project, I thought I would work on a few stuffs that have been waiting for a while because of lack of time. The first one of these is adding the requested voluntary components to the free nutrition facts panel tool.
Accordingly, I have added polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat and potassium to the labeling tool. I have also changed a little the layout and allowed to input fractions in the number of serving. Here is an example of a label made with the updated labeling tool:
If you would like to incorporate the nutrition facts panel to another document, the best way is probably to print it to pdf format. You can then open the file in Acrobat Reader or another software that reads pdf files and from there cut & paste it or use it in any other way. This is a better solution than taking a screenshot, as you won’t lose in resolution.
If you work on a Macintosh, the “Print to pdf” function is built-in. On Windows, a number of free (and not free) tools will allow you to do that. For example, see the list of pdf software on Wikipedia.
If you want to share the way you are using the free tool to create nutrition facts panels, leave a comment below.
