Software
Software is what integrates the Kitchen PC into something useful.We’ve not found a single application that does everything you’d want, but here are some options for a collection of programs you can use and enhance:
Inventory — Barcode-driven inventory software is one of the two fundamental applications for your Kitchen PC. Our Anything Inventory software (Chapter 6) is a fully functional, although simple, application, and as connections out to the Internet to resolve barcodes to products.
Recipes — Cookbooks are great, but you’ll want a database to store the recipes you use over and over, including the unique changes to the original recipe you’ve made. Later on in this section, we’ll describe a Microsoft Access database we built to show some of the possibilities.
Timer — Cooking is a sequence of steps, many of which take specific lengths of time. We found several small programs that operate as kitchen timers, including Tiny Timer and Egg Timer. Of the two, we prefer Egg Timer, because Tiny Timer lacks an audible alarm.
Providing the right information in the right place at the right time is the job of a Kitchen PC. What that means in practice depends on how intense you are about cooking, and about how you work in your kitchen. Building your own Kitchen PC lets you adapt it to your specific kitchen and your way of working.
Providing the right information in the right place at the right time is the job of a Kitchen PC. What that means in practice depends on how intense you are about cooking, and about how you work in your kitchen. Building your own Kitchen PC lets you adapt it to your specific kitchen and your way of working.