CookPacs

[MrsReber]

I have Mastercook software at home and I am considering buying the CookPacs from CL. Do I simply download all of the recipes at once and then sort them out? Do they come with pictures? I know that there is someone who posts on the BB that they love them. I was just looking at another thread about filing recipes, but the software seems to be the way to go. So easy to look up things quickly!

I appreciate any feedback, good or bad.

Thanks!
Susan

[MrsReber]

Okay, I'm going to try again with my post. It got very lost yesterday!

[Ohioan]

MrsR, something else you ought to be aware of if you're going to be using the Cookpacs with Mastercook is that because of the way the ingredients are listed in the Cookpacs, Mastercook can't match them against the ingredient nutrition list, so you don't get accurate nutrition information unless you hand-edit almost every ingredient in every recipe. I know, because I had to do it with the first Cookpac I bought. http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/frown.gif I finally decided that it would be easier to type the recipes from scratch.

As for version 6 of Mastercook, sometimes they'll give you a free upgrade if you've bought one version just a month or two before the new one was issued. Why not check in with Sierra's customer service people and find out?

Phoebe

[Nanci]

Susan,
Don't buy the bundle for 1997 (I don't think 98 is available in a bundle only indiv. mos.) Prior to 1998 CookPacs are not compatibile w/MasterCook. I bought it last Friday after throwing out my old hardcopies of the magazines when I moved, and had to spend a bit of time to find out 97 is not compatibile. The manufacturer did say say they hope to have 97 available next year.

I haven't really experimented, but I'll have to check on the ingredients matching -- I am kicking myself for throwing the magazines out!!!!

Nanci

[MrsReber]

Wow, thanks everyone for the posts. I am still kind of debating if I should just go through the magazine and pick out the recipes I want, then type them in. I know what you mean about the nutritional info being off if the ingredients don't match up. But, like Grace said, with the cookpacs, you can go back and try other recipes because you'll have all of them. I may just try to do a few of them. With the August 2000 magazine, there were hardly any recipes I wanted to try, so I wouldn't want to buy the cookpac for that month. I do have most, if not all of the 97 recipes on my MC 5.0. Thanks for the info, Phoebe, I will have to see if I can get a free upgrade. Can't hurt to ask! Then again, I only paid $20 for it, if I have to buy the new one. So much to think about!

[Grace]

Hi Susan

It's probably me you're thinking of that loves the cookpacs. (And I do). I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets them, but I think I'm the only one that raves about them! Anyhow, I have the CL CookWare Software, not MasterCook, and while the Cookpacs work for both softwares, my software doesn't include pictures to begin with, so naturally, the downloads don't have pictures. Since MasterCook HAS pictures, I don't know whether the cookpac downloads come with pictures for MasterCook or not. This is a question I'm sure www.cookn.com (http://www.cookn.com) could answer.

Each month, you go to the cookn.com website, click on the current month's issue, and download the cookpac for that issue. You can download it to your hard drive, to a diskette (that's what I do), to a rewriteable CD, where ever you choose to save it to. Then, I open my CookWare software, and go to the function, "Open Cookpac"....at which time another window opens up, a picture of the cover of that month's issue shows up, and next to it, the titles of every recipe in that issue. I go through and click on the recipes I want to download off the diskette onto my permanent CookWare database that's in my hard drive. A little asterisk appears next the recipes I click on. Once I get through the whole list, I click on OK at the bottom, and the recipes I've marked get downloaded into my main software. I then pop the diskette out and put it in a case with all the other diskettes. I sometimes go back to them, a) to get a recipe for someone on the board that I didn't download in the first place (probably because it didn't sound good to me), or b) when I read a review of a recipe from the BB that someone raves about that I didn't originally think I'd like, I can still get that recipe into my CookWare from the diskette. Also, just in case (God forbid) my computer crashed, I could re-download all the recipes from the diskettes again if I had to. There is a key that allows you to download all the recipes if you want them, instead of choosing out certain ones. I have always in the past liked to pick out only the ones that appealed to me, partly because we didn't have a lot of space on our hard drive, and partly because I don't like to wade through recipes that don't sound good to me. But we've since upgraded our computer to 30gb of hard-drive space, and you all on this board have introduced me and encouraged me to try stuff I never thought I would have before, so I'm considering downloading the whole thing every month now, as well as going back to the old diskettes and getting all those old ones I passed over before, too....still can't decide on that one, though, but the choice is there!

Sorry for the dissertation, but I hope that helps you!

Grace

[This message has been edited by Grace (edited 09-07-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Grace (edited 09-07-2000).]

[MrsReber]

Grace, thanks so much for all the info, it's very helpful to me. It sounds great to be able to download all the recipes and that's a great idea to save them all to disk. I was upset when I read about MC 6.0 coming out with 3,000 recipes since I just bought 5.0, but if I can just download them, it won't really matter. I think I will try it, I just wanted to get a little more info before I did. I am so unorganized at home and the MC software is slowly helping me become more organized with the hundreds of recipes I have from magazines and newspapers.

Thanks again!
Susan

[Grace]

Susan...

One thing to consider - You might still want to buy MC 6.0, with the 3000 recipes, because EACH of the cookpacs cost $6.98. That's $6.98 for each MONTH. They do have a deal for the years 1997 and 1998 (I think?) - something like $25.00 (or so) for the whole year's worth of recipe, but I have been paying a lot for those cookpacs over the years. Maybe you might want to consider buying the 6.0 version, and then getting the cookpacs from that point forward? I don't know, but I do know that to buy all the back downloads would be pretty $$$$$ http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/smile.gif

Good luck!

Grace

[ChefChris]

Hi

I came across this thread while searching for info on cookware/mastercook. I have mastercook 5 which only goes up to cookinglight 98, so I am trying to find a way to put more recipes into it. I thought the cookpac was a good solution except the nutritional info not working into mastercook would be very upseting...I agree with grace that buying 99 and 00's cookpacs would be very expensive too! Mrs. Reber I am curious as to what you decided...

I do have the annuals too, so I guess if I decided on a recipe to use from the cookpac/mastercook set up I could then go look up the accurate nutritional analysis...

My goal is to find a way to manage all of those recipes I want to try. Everyone on the BB has such great ideas and I have lists and lists of things to try, but it is unweildy when it comes time to decide what to make.

also, does anyone know what years of CL are included in Mastercook 6?

I would love to hear your thoughts
Thanks so much!
Chris