Dinner Ninja

Every once in a while, you suddenly realize that you’re richer than you thought. Maybe you find a twenty in your sock drawer, or you remember that you have leftover paella in your fridge and no one else knows about it! I suddenly got that feeling the other day while using EYB for the first time. In this case, though, it wasn’t cash or paella. No, this time it was 30,000 (!) recipes.

When I first started learning to cook, I had 2 cookbooks. One was 365 Ways to Cook Chicken. The other was The Silver Palate Cookbook, which had a pretty good index. Basically, if I didn’t want to eat chicken, I’d look up “pork chops” or “potato salad” or whatever in the Silver Palate index. If it wasn’t in there, I didn’t eat it. But by the time my cookbook collection had expanded to 10, I had the classic home cook’s dilemma: a refrigerator full of rapidly expiring ingredients, and a heap of books I didn’t feel like hunting through. They were already irreconcilable.

Twenty years later, I’m a cookbook reviewer and my predicament has become comical. Over 700 cookbooks have infiltrated my house. They’re stacked on chairs, on top of the coffee maker, under my bed. Wads of Post-Its fringe their pages, but I never try even a third of the recipes. It’s too daunting a data-retrieval project.

Enter EYB! Suddenly when I’m looking for a cookbook, I can find it (“set location”). Suddenly, I know how many recipes for grilled chicken I have and where to find them(“search recipes”)… And suddenly, I don’t have to scrawl out the shopping list, inevitably forgetting the shallots (“print shopping list”). Susie, former hapless weekday cook, has become a Dinner Ninja!

Even if I were 22 again–10 pounds and 690 cookbooks lighter–I’d consider EYB a bargain at the price. If you’re already an EYB user, you know what I’m talking about. And if you aren’t, you have to try it to appreciate it. Treat yourself to a free trial. Before you know it, you’ll be a Dinner Ninja too.