I’m on a cooking crusade to find and use the best Mac cooking and recipe management apps. In a digital world I’m amazed at how quickly we revert to an analog metaphor to manage specific tasks.
We can move a Mac notebook into the kitchen to help us cook. What’s on the Mac’s screen? If you’re using the Mac app Yum then you’re using a digital cork board to manage recipes. What’s next? Decorative magnets to cover the refrigerator door of our panty database?
The Digital Corkboard And Notepad
Simply put, Yum is a kitchen companion for Mac users intent on putting some digital discipline into your cooking routine. Yum manages recipes and shopping lists using two very familiar screen metaphors.
The cork board is the center of your recipe management.
Sure, recipes can be saved in categories and folders, even tagged and rated. But the cork board is where you stick the recipe as a reminder for what you’re planning to cook next (or, soon).
Recipes can be added from the internet to increase your collection. Grab a favorite or something new, poke it onto the digital cork board and start cooking.
Yum does something I really like. At home, it’s just me and my husband, so I cook for two. When family and friends are in town I cook for a dozen. Yum scales the recipes to match the number you’ve invited for dinner.
The cork board lets you browse recipes by photo, change the preparation steps to match your cooking style. You can even email recipes to friends and family members, print recipes, or save them as PDFs.
All your recipes can be searched, made easier with tags and ratings. Searches can be saved. Recipes are visible in full screen, perfect for moving the Mac notebook to the kitchen.
Cooking isn’t all about action—there’s plenty of preparation, ingredients to buy, shopping lists to manage and remember. Yum has you covered with another metaphor from the 20th century. The note pad.
Yum’s note pad pops on screen when you click the Shopping Lists in the left column of the Yum interface.
It’s a simple to-do list of ingredients you’ll need based upon a recipe you’ve selected from the recipe manager.
The Yum interface works like iTunes or iPhoto so you already know how to use it.
All your recipes are stored in the library, which is marked All (it should be marked Recipe Library). Default recipe categories include Top Rated and last viewed, but you can add what you need and organize according to your requirements.
Cloud Recipes are those recipes you find on the internet. They, too, can be organized into folders and categories. Yum is not as complex or feature laden as Yummy Soup or MacGourmet, but has one feature to die for.
There’s a free iPhone version of Yum so you can carry recipes anywhere. Yum is more than decent. It’s elegant and attractive and comfortable. I’m still a bit uncomfortable with moving my MacBook Pro into the kitchen. Cork board, note pad, and iPhone version. Three ways Yum is a worthy tool for your kitchen.
About Bambi Brannan
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