How Useful Is a Kitchen PC?
Published: July 12, 2004
Back in the early eighties when PCs were young, my spouse expressed interest in acquiring a computer. I replied, "What on earth for?" Trying to sell me on his gadget idea, he blurted, "We can keep our recipes on it!" I thought this the silliest idea since the recipe computer was offered for a mere $10,600 in 1969. So even though we got that first computer (and many more afterward), we employed it for typical tasks—word processing, number crunching, and eventually for e-mail and Web surfing. But not for recipes.
Then a couple of years ago we finally put a notebook PC in the kitchen. Soon we were keeping shopping lists and placing online grocery orders on the kitchen PC. After all, that's where you are when you discover that the milk carton in the refrigerator is empty. And since everyone cooks in our house and the atmosphere can become a bit strained when a fellow cook dribbles their demi-glace all over your mother's blackberry pie recipe, we started keeping our favorite recipes in a folder on the kitchen PC desktop.
Figure 1
Having a computer right at hand means that shopping list items get entered before I forget them, recipes can be viewed without wrestling with an outsize cookbook, and I can still check my e-mail or the weather forecast instead of staring glumly at the watched-pot-that-never-boils.
In this column, I'll cover some of my favorite cooking sites from regional recipes to food substitutions to exotic spice shopping. And outline how to set up your kitchen computer as part of a wired or wireless network. Plus provide a few tips on how to avoid interference from small kitchen appliances.
Finding Recipes
Of course, the Internet is a vast repository of recipes from plain to fancy. You can find countless sites that concentrate on regional cooking from Alsace to Zanzibar. Often these sites include links to sources for uncommon ingredients, so when the urge strikes to whip up some West Sumatran Fish Curry, you won't be stymied by a lack of galangal.
Perhaps you're not that adventurous but dinner time is approaching, and both potential ingredients and ideas are scarce. Just open Internet Explorer on your kitchen PC and search for recipes by available ingredients. Enter the ingredients you want included in the recipe and, if you choose, ingredients that you want to exclude.
Solving Recipe Problems
Cooks have been dealing with badly behaved recipes since the discovery of fire. Sometimes, no matter how scrupulously you follow instructions, the recipe simply fails, which can result from a typographical error or because the recipe's author didn't test it thoroughly. So I like recipe sites like CDKitchen and Allrecipes that include reviews. A recipe with many reviews and a high rating is undoubtedly reliable. When a recipe has decidedly mixed reviews, both highly praised and highly criticized, it pays to read some of the negative assessments. Surprisingly often, these criticisms reveal that the cook made several poorly thought-out substitutions, omitted other ingredients, and concluded that the recipe was at fault.
Sooner or later you come up against recipes that call for ingredients you don't have. It's possible to make some types pf substitutions and still come out with a reasonable facsimile of the dish. Most seasoned cooks know about substituting flour for corn starch or arrowroot but who knew you could substitute mashed banana and baking powder for a whole egg? Don't try the more exotic substitutions when you're baking a birthday cake for someone special. Substitutions are quick-and-dirty solutions in an emergency and some work a lot better than others.
Another difficulty arises when a recipe uses unfamiliar measurements or ingredient names. When you have a PC in the kitchen, it's easy to find metric conversions. Just type "cooking conversions" in a search engine and you'll have more tables and calculators than you can shake a stick at.
It's only slightly more complicated when you have a recipe that specifies mysterious ingredients. For example, an English friend sent me a recipe that called for caster sugar and another one that advised me to "toss a couple of Swedes into the pot." Once I got past that startling mental image, I went to the kitchen PC. Before I knew it, I'd found ingredients shown in their Australian-British-American forms, from English to Hindi and other southeast Asian languages, both English-French and French-English culinary dictionaries, and an excellent all-purpose food dictionary.
How to Set Up a Kitchen Computer
You don't need a high-performance PC for the kitchen. We found the perfect solution in a notebook that was due to be retired from active duty as a work machine, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Of course, you can use almost any serviceable computer but laptops have the advantage of taking up less room. Wireless is the way to go when setting up a kitchen PC unless you crave the excitement of stringing cables around cabinets and behind appliances. A wireless connection means the computer isn't tied to a specific location so when the spirit moves you, you can take it on the road or just out onto the porch.
With Windows XP, setting up a wireless network is easier than ever. If you already have an Ethernet (wired) network, you can add a wireless kitchen PC with the addition of an 802.11 network card for the kitchen PC and a wireless access point. In this case, a wireless access point functions as a bridge, creating a connection between the wireless kitchen PC and the Ethernet network. Linksys and D-Link are major makers of wireless hardware.
Microsoft Broadband Networking products also allow you to share a single broadband connection among your home computers. Take a few minutes to go through the Network Guide and get recommendations for wired or wireless connections. You can buy hardware by the piece or in a kit including software to ease the path of installation. See Barb Bowman's column to help you set up the Microsoft Broadband Networking Wireless Base Station, Wireless Networking Made Simple.
Setting up a new wireless network that will include your kitchen PC will require network cards, one or more wireless access points or a wireless router. If you already have a wireless home network, you'll only need to add an 802.11 network card for the kitchen computer. You'll find the Home and Small Office Networking with Windows XP home page a useful source for information. You'll find advice on what kind of network to install as well as technical data on connections, security, and troubleshooting.
Manage Interference from Other Appliances
The major drawback of a wireless connection in the kitchen is the possible interference from the other appliances. Of the three wireless specifications in use today, 802.11b and 802.11g transmit their packets using the 2.4 GHz band. This is the same band used by many cordless telephone systems. Also, microwave ovens operate at or near 2.4 GHz. In theory, this means that someone can wander into the kitchen using the cordless phone or start the microwave to reheat coffee and boom! your network connection disappears. In practice, just don't locate your computer immediately next to a microwave oven or a 2.4 GHz phone and you'll be unlikely to encounter interference.
If you do have an interference problem, you can use an 802.11a wireless connection providing that any other wireless connections are also set up to use 802.11a. 802.11a wireless connections use the 5 GHz band, so you avoid interference issues with microwave ovens and 2.4 GHz cordless phones.
If you do set up 802.11a and also travel with your notebook, get a three-way network card, known as 802.11a/b/g, so you can be compatible with the (mostly) 802.11b and some 802.11g hotspots you'll encounter. Further help tips, and answers to questions can also be found in the Microsoft Windows Wireless Networking newsgroup.
 | Sharon Crawford is a former editor now engaged in writing books and magazine articles. Since 1993, she has written or co-written two dozen books on computer topics. Her books include Windows 2000 Pro: The Missing Manual, Windows 98: No Experience Required, and Windows 2000 Professional for Dummies (with Andy Rathbone).
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