Can't decide what to eat? (Cooking Guide (DS))

Member Name: astros89

Product:	Cooking Guide (DS)
Date:	30/12/08 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to find recipes in a number of different ways. A fun way of cooking.

Disadvantages: I don't think there are many recipes for vegetarians but a substitute can be used.

The Cooking Guide is a recipe book for the DS. It costs £25 normally and I managed to get it for £20 in the sale. It contains 245 recipes from different countries.

When you go on to the game the options are cooking guide, cooking A-Z and shopping list.

The cooking guide is the option you choose to find a recipe. There are a number of different ways to find a recipe which I find useful. You can view all 245 which are split in to categories e.g. salads and soups.

You can also search by country, ingredients or requirements. If you search by county it will show a world map and put points on the country where the are recipes available.

Searching by ingredients is good if you have an ingredient you need to use and there are different tabbed sections for meat, seafood, fruit & veg and condiments to make each ingredient easier to find.

Entering requirements allows you to find recipes of a set difficulty level. cooking time or method, calories and main ingredients.

When you have chosen something you would like to cook it will give you a description of the food and then tips and advice. It will tell you the total preparation time and the number of calories in the meal.

You can then view a list of ingredients and tick them to add to a shopping list so you know what you need to buy and it will also give you alternative ingredient ideas. You can choose the number of people you are cooking for and it will recalculate the ingredients you need. It shows the utensils you will need. After viewing the ingredients you can look at the cooking steps which are very easy to understand. They are broken down in to easy steps to help you.

The cooking A-Z is made up of a number of helpful categories which tell you about terminology, utensils, substitute ingredients, helpful tips, utensils, chopping and cutting etc. When you click on
one e.g. chopping and cutting > chopping flatleaf parsley, I find the steps and pictures very helpful and easy to follow. This is good for if you know nothing at all about cooking and it will show the the very basics.

There are a good number of recipes and it will keep a log of whether you have cooked them before and on what date and put it in the calender. There is also an option to add your own notes to recipes.

I do find this cooking guide very helpful when I can't think what to cook and I can put in what main ingredient to use and it will find something for me.

Another good thing is that when you are cooking and can't use your hand to move to the next page on the DS you can just speak in to the microphone and it will change the page for you.

Summary: Great when you can think what to cook.