I have a dream of recipe software that will take as input my pantry inventory and give me something delicious to make out of it.

Dude, seriously, Mastercook. It freaking rocks.

Not only can you enter your pantry into it (and keep track of when you bought stuff and when it'll expire, and how much it cost for budgeting next time you shop), but you totally can say, "What can I make with what I have?" although there's this weird thing where you have to enter that you have water in your pantry.

Then you can create menu plans and shopping lists. Once you've bought the stuff off your shopping list you can merge it into your pantry items. You can search for meals with whatever ingredients, or that don't have those ingredients. It gives you nutritional information. And furthermore there's a ton of (legal and not) downloadable cookbooks in its format out there that you can grab. You can email recipes (panicked calls to mom and she fires off the classic family favorite and I import it into my cookbook.)

There's a tips section, and a favorites where you can keep track of recipes you like. You can easily adjust the recipe, doubling it for parties or such. You can of course add your own recipes and it calculates the nutritional value based on the ingredients and you can add your own ingredients and their nutritional information.

You can do both menu planning (like, for the week) and meal planning (throughout the day), allowing you to see how you did on caloric intake over the whole day. It's super intuitive, and probably much better by now. I have version 6. After that, they pulled it from the shelves, but there was an uproar and it's back now. Now they're on version 9, and it's cheap. Mine came with a giant catalog of Betty Crocker cookbooks.

Lots of websites offer their recipes in Mastercook format.

Mastercook likes carrots.

But seriously, dude, it revolutionized my life. Right after the bread machine, it improved my quality of dining. Because I'm a geek, and I can do anything if I have software for it.

Okay, first dozen cookies are in the oven - and drat the luck - I timed it all wrong. I won't be able to taste them 'til tomorrow. (Fasting blood test in the morning.)

I used syrup. Okay, the dough tasted good. Umm, the recipe I used called cookie dough "batter" but this was definitely dough not batter.

Ha! The BBC World News or whatever it's called is going to do a feature on bored striking writers putting videos on youtube.

Liese, two of the student worker from my office went home - due to fear

Also, seriously, I need to explore my options more thoroughly.

This: go Liese go!!

Thanks for all the house-wishes, everybody. I'm loving it. We settled on paint colors today, and just about settled on the shower floor tile.

I won't be able to taste them 'til tomorrow. (Fasting blood test in the morning.)

Dude, that's just wrong.

Dude, it's like you just handed me the Holy Grail that's been kicking around in your hall closet for a while. Thank you, Liese!

Eta: I see why I haven't come across it before. PC only, apparently. If it's that useful, though, I can make it work.

If the dough tastes good I'm sure the cookies will taste good. How unfair of the universe to arrange itself so that you have to wait to try them!

Huh. There used to be a Mac version. It's 4.06, you might be able to find copies of it floating around on the web, I hear. But you'd have to run Classic. Says the internet. I dunno.

Anyway, yeah, it's great. Sorry I didn't manage to rec it before! It has some limitations and some weirdnesses, like all programs, but I've been very happy with it.

Well, if I had started baking immediately upon arriving home from work. . . but I was too clobbered. I needed to decompress a bit first. Plus, figure out those substitutions.

Welcome, Gadget Girl! All I know of Central Florida is Lake Ocala, where I went on vacation a few (er, or, actually, 8) years ago.

The Boy is in the basement, unblocking the pathways to the 2 heating vents down there, because the heating/cooling dude is coming tomorrow to clean out the vents/heating system. It's supposed to be extremely helpful when living with pets, and given that The Boy has had 2 dogs and and average of 3 cats and hasn't had the vents cleaned in the 5 years he's lived here....you do the math.

I'm expecting that the vent-cleaning dude will find about 500 cats' worth of hair.

I've got a Windows environment, and access to DH's PC, it'll be fine. I've always done my searching looking for Mac software, though, which is why I've never seen it.