Dinner Wizard Help

-what's for dinner?

Background

I grew up in a family probably like most others. My mother had the same problem each and every day: what to cook for dinner? And I don't blame her. Coming up with dinner suggestions 365 days a year is hard work!

Now as an grown up computer programmer I came up with the idea of making a program to help her with this. The program turned out pretty nice, and since she is not alone with this problem I have decided to release it to the world!

How it Works

First you need to enter all dinner suggestions you can think of. Tip: You will probably not be able to remember everything you normally eat, so make it a habit of writing down new dishes whenever you come to think of one.

The first time you start you will see that I have entered a few common dishes for you. These are just to get you started, and you can safely remove them as you please!

When you start the program you will see the menu page. By clicking on the menu text the program will randomly create a new menu for the whole week! Note that it is not intended that you stricly follow this menu. The idea is to get inspiration. You can click on the menu several times. Each time a new menu is created!

Of course, not all dishes are suitable for all days of the week. So here is the smart thing with this program: When you add a new dish, you also select the weekdays you think it is suitable to eat. For example, I like to eat Tacos on Fridays and Saturdays, so I have selected these two days for this particular dish. Now, when you generate a new menu on the first page, the program will take this into consideration and automatically select dishes for each weekday based on your prefereces!

If the menu does not completely please you, you can click on menu items that you like and they will turn green. Marked items will not be replaced the next time you generate a new menu!

Conclusion

Dinner Wizard is only a small utility. It is not a complete food or recepie program, rather a helpful utility that you run to get ideas. I hope you like it and find it useful!

Who Made This Program?

The name is Dan and I run a small website called RL Vision where I publish the software I create. Some are free, some cost a little bit because they have taken many many hours of spare time to make. Dinner Wizard is completely free, but if you like it a small donation would make me soooo happy!

More Programs

Have a look at these other neat program that I have created:

Version History

  • v2.11 (2010-09-02) Fixed a bug causing crashes on startup on new installs.

  • v2.1 (2010-08-20) Added ability to "hold" menu items. Improved random routines. Program will now save settings locally if a file called DinnerWiz.dat is found in application folder.

  • v2.0 (2009-11-23) First public release. Much better looking! Added printing! Added this help page. New logo & icon. Added XP Theming. Translated into English. Lots of bug fixes & tweaks.

  • v1.0 (2004-09-30) Initial version. For private use only.