Mac using Foodies rejoice! Paprika is the best app in existence.

A few months ago when I downloaded the App Store on my Mac, I giddily browsed and downloaded many apps that I then promptly forgot about in the fray of hubs quitting his job, and keeping up with 20-30 orders a day. One of those not-so-long-lost apps was Paprika, a recipe manager. I kept seeing its cute red icon winking at me while I was working on other things, and continued to forget each and every mental note that said "I need to open that lil guy up and take it for a spin."

Well, I finally did last night and I'm just beside myself with glee! This is the best app I've ever purchased. It's $19.99 extremely well spent. If you're like me and have been printing recipes from sites like Epicurious, AllRecipes, Martha Stewart, etc. for years, keeping all said dirty and well used printed recipes in a hastily organized binder taking up valuable counter space in your kitchen... THIS app is for you!

Once I realized that I could use the Browser feature of this app to add my favorite online recipes to my catalog with one click, I stayed up late last night doing just that with everything I had printed (though in reality, it only took me about an hour to find and add 56 recipes). I'm recycling a ton of paper this morning, with a huge grin on my face.

The app is so crazy simple, and it syncs across your Mac, iPhone and iPad (the apps for these two devices are an extra $4.99 each, but well worth it in my opinion.) via iCloud, so no matter what I have closest to the kitchen when it's time to cook, or in my purse when its time to grocery shop, I'm prepared.

I'm captured some screen shots of my favorite features:

Recipe view, you can create your own categories, and add each recipe to as many of them as you'd like. You can also mark favorites, view my most recent, or view all of them in alphabetical order. From this screen you can drag and drop into categories.

The built-in browser screen comes pre-loaded with bookmarks for most of the good recipe websites, and you can add and remove as you please. The software is brilliant, all you need to do once you're at a recipe is click the "Save Recipe" button in the upper right hand corner, it fills everything in for you, like this. (And here you can tweak ingredients, add notes, and change things, if you've made a recipe before and know what you like better.

Recipe view shows every part of the recipe on the screen, so you don't need to scroll with dirty chicken-breading hands (or caramel covered ones!) You can also click the icons above the recipe to save it to a menu/meal for a certain date, email it to someone, print it (why oh why?) or trash it if it's a bomb. To the right you can add it to your favorites or your grocery list.

Grocery list view lets you check off things you already have, and view just "Unpurchased" items so your grocery list stays uncluttered.

The Meals/Menu planner lets you select recipes for specific meals of the day, here I'm planning the menu for next Saturday's Jewelry Shopping Meat & Eat! When you click on a recipe from this view, it automatically takes you to the full recipe. Simple!

It's plain to see why I'm enamored with this app, and while I know $20 is a bit of an investment, if you cook from recipes with any kind of regularity, it's well worth it.

You can download Paprika from the app store on your Mac, iPhone or iPad right now!