I wrote up a sneak peek of Dishy [iTunes Link] earlier in the summer when I saw a preview at WWDC. It was called Bon App at the time, and man it looked tasty. Well the app is now out and it rocks. I've been testing a demo for a little while and I wish more cooking apps worked like this.

Dishy takes you from meal planning to shopping to cooking in one convenient app. It is not like some food apps, which are designed to be recipe databases. Instead, Dishy focuses on a few recipes that have been tested by a real chef and uses those to create a small but tasty (and powerful) database. Don't let the inability to enter or alter recipes deter you -- if you are a beginner cook who wants to cook (nearly) like a pro, Dishy is the best step I've seen in that direction. The great experience coupled with a brilliant way of finding dishes to cook makes prepping food less of a chore, for sure.

The flow works like this: choose your dishes, collect your ingredients, then go through the cooking process for each dish. Dishy handles every step with beautiful panache, as seen in their demo video here. Two key features in Dishy: a graph showing how long each dish takes to cook and the ability to fine-tune recipe options. You don't want cold veggies and burnt meat, and Dishy helps you avoid this common bungle by showing you a nifty chart of when to start each dish (see gallery).

If you love to cook or if you've wanted to try preparing a cohesive meal, I recommend you give Dishy a try.

Getting through the work week is hard enough for most of us... but the minute Friday afternoon rolls around, there's a certain breed that face the weekend with a long list of "honey do" projects and household duties. Yes, the weekend warriors need iPhone app love too -- whether to help with those maintenance challenges, or find ways to make the break from the day job a bit more enjoyable. Here's a five app collection just for you, my brothers and sisters in the two-day sprint; enjoy.

Weber's On The Grill™ [iTunes link] for iPhone, at $4.99, would seem to be a bit pricey compared to other grill-centric cooking apps selling for $0.99 (dadoo's Grill Guide) or the large number of free and well-regarded cookbook apps on the store (check out Epicurious Recipies & Shopping List, for one). Nevertheless, if you're serious about getting the most out of your grill, the $5 you spend on this app will be well worth it.

Weber may be the world's largest grill manufacturer, but the relationship of Weber owners to their grills feels more personal than mass-marketed; in fact, the slightly obsessive and cultish fandom around the Weber brand may seem a wee bit familiar to, uh, owners of a particular company's computers, music players and cellphones. Ahem.

The iPhone app takes the Weber customer very seriously, providing a great collection of hundreds of recipes along with grilling technique guides (including videos from chef Jamie Purviance), time and temperature recommendations, a handy shopping list manager, and a convenient cooking timer right in the app. About the only thing that's missing is an optional meat thermometer to plug into the dock connector (which I would totally buy if they made one).

Some apps are almost universal. Chances are you may find a use for one of these apps in your daily goings-on, just as I have. All links are iTunes links.


Flicktunes, $0.99
Remember our chat about driving and using your iPhone? Flicktunes makes controlling the iPod in your iPhone (or touch) much easier when you have to focus on other things -- like driving. Flick your finger left or right to navigate your playlist, up or down to start or stop the music. The album art is all you see, plus a speaker icon indicating playback. It's super easy, a simple app, but very useful if you're driving or otherwise occupied while jamming out.

Army Knife, $1.99
If you need to measure something in a jiffy, Army Knife is a 9-in-1 tool with several measuring tools. There's a protractor, a caliper and a tape measure, plus a level and a "heart monitor" (you tap as your heart beats). There's a unit converter with distance, volume, weight and temperature conversions, and a flashlight and whistle. The flashlight, yes, is just a screen of white, but the whistle is kind of fun and will irritate your pets (please note: I do not condone irritating your pets, please do not flame me for hating animals).

Todo, $9.99
If you use Remember the Milk or Toodledoo, you should know that Todo syncs with them. There's also a free sync app for your desktop, which is essentially a backup... except there's a way to sync Todo with The Hit List via iCal. Is it optimal? No, but until THL has an iPhone app (not criticizing the developer as I'd rather it be done right than fast) this does the trick to an extent. Todo even without sync is a beautiful thing to behold and full of flexibility. In fact, the flexibility of the app is a little shocking, given the lowly status of the "to do" genre of apps. If you need a listmaker/to do/checklist app with or without sync capabilities, this is one of the best out there. Worth the $9.99 for what you get.

CardStar, free
If you're tired of carrying around a dozen membership or discount cards, CardStar will help you out. There are templates for many retailers and discount systems (air miles and so forth), and you can choose from a variety of barcode types. I was able to experiment with the codes a bit and test things at each of my errand stops (Blockbuster, Kroger, etc.), eventually winnowing my keychain down to just 2 keys and a door opener.

BigOven, free
I've toyed around with a few cooking apps, but if you're out and about (and have a signal) BigOven is a great way to throw a dish together based on an ingredient. BigOven basically makes everyone an Iron Chef -- at least as far as cool recipes goes. It can't help you cook things, and the text rendering could be a little more clear, but you can favorite stuff (with a BigOven free account), and copy an entire recipe for emailing. I'm not saying the interface is great, but the BigOven database is huge and stocked with what looks like good recipes.

I guess you could say I'm an armchair foodie. Strangely enough, once I started working at home I rarely got the chance to cook a proper meal. It doesn't help that my kids have typical kid palates, and attempts to "get fancy" with the ingredients are met with wrinkled noses and frowning faces. So when I see an app that looks like it'll make my cooking life simpler and better I'm very, very excited.

Bon App looks to do just that -- it simplifies the entire cooking process, from planning to shopping to cooking. All on the iPhone (or iPod touch). What really has me excited is the way it does this. Any blunt object can bash a nail. I mean, there's a reason Mac users have higher standards, right? I like to think we appreciate ease-of-use and quality design. Bon App has an extensive feature list, yes, but it looks darn good doing what it does, and the developer spent serious time thinking about how you interact with the app.

While I can't show you any screens (the developer was adamant that I not record video), I tell you about a few things I saw. One nice touch: when selecting a particular dish to cook, an icon of the recipe bounces down into a menu bar, indicating where to go next (shopping list, if I recall correctly). I don't remember the shopping list feature well, but the cooking features are exceptional. The app shows you a visual indication of how long each dish will take along a bar graph. This helps you plan what to cook and when. As anyone who has played Hell's Kitchen will tell you, timing is critical. You don't want hot side dishes and a cold entree. It was the first time I'd seen that on an app, and was indicative of the thought put into the app's flow.

The final pieces hadn't been put together when I had a look at the demo. The developer was still thinking through the last phase (cooking, which can be tricky, as trying to prep a meal isn't as straightforward as you might think) and tweaking the interaction. I'm also not sure how recipes get into the app. If you're looking for a desktop cooking app that syncs with the iPhone, about the best I've found so far is Avenio's MacGourmet. But I will certainly be keeping an eye out for Bon App. Even though I'm very happy with Sous Chef, the detail and design of Bon App has me wishing I could pre-order now.

We here at TUAW are big fans of Apple's products (shocking, I know) so whenever something new comes out we cover the heck out of it. At the moment the new hotness, as the dorks who desperately want to sound cool say, is the iPhone. TUAW is all atwitter about the iPhone (though you can subscribe to an iPhone-less feed if it isn't your thing) which makes sense since it is a rather important product launch for Apple.

We're not the only ones going batty for the iPhone, though. Blogs, newspapers, and magazines are all hot and bothered about the iPhone. Case in point: 101cookbooks. That's right, a cooking blog is writing about the iPhone, but that's not all. They even created new, iPhone specific versions of their site for everyone's favorite unreleased mobile device. You can check out the recent recipes, or categories on designed for the iPhone webpages.

Who needs a silly old SDK anyway?

Thanks, Marisa.

The folks at MacGourmet have entered their second round of Public Beta 2 - Version 2.0.0 Beta 9. We've written about MacGourmet many times before and we're still fans of this recipe manager for OS X.

MacGourmet 2 is universal binary and this release includes the following changes:

• [FIXED] Added type-ahead to library browser, category and equipment lists, for consistency.
• [FIXED] Enter key will open the selected recipe again.
• [FIXED] Data entered into Info field in multiple recipe editor now correctly updates recipe information.
• [FIXED] Info field data is correctly sent to the database.
• [FIXED] Extended keyboard Delete key is now supported.
• [FIXED] Delete toolbar button no longer enabled for items that can't be deleted.
• [FIXED] Exception is no longer thrown when something is posted to a weblog with no definitions.
• [FIXED] Exception no longer thrown when fetching XML file and there are no blog posts and no feed file on server.
• [FIXED] Categories and equipment are now sorted in a case-insensitive manner.
• [FIXED] Recipe box search field is now cleared and previously hidden item is selected if something in library browser is double-clicked.
• [FIXED] Search in Library Browser is restored after a change is made.
• [FIXED] Fixed a "random" crash caused because of incorrectly released memory.
• [FIXED] Image viewer should now correctly save its location.
• [ADDED] Added preference to turn off Library Browser change confirmations.

Although it's UB, the beta is still a debug version, so performance may not be optimal just yet. MacGourmet 2 is a free upgrade for registered users of MacGourmet 1 and if you purchase v1 before December 15th you can save $5 by entering the code: BETATHANKS at checkout. This 2.0.0b9 will expire on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at midnight.

I'm entering the final phase of a major kitchen renovation and have been spending more and more time staring at my shiny new appliances and into the cupboards trying to think of what to cook when it's all done. I recently downloaded MacGourmet and the included sample recipes have already given me lots of inspiration and I've already started cataloging my meager wine collection with it. As soon as the final touches are put on my new kitchen, I am sure I will be filling the digital Recipe Box with some of my own tasty treats!