Gamers can get pretty hungry while shooting zombies, and they can’t survive on just soda and nachos.
That’s why we have "Personal Trainer: Cooking," an E-rated recipe program developed by Indies Zero for the Nintendo DS.
The program offers almost 250 recipes from around the world.
You can search for dishes by country, complexity, ingredients, calorie count or cooking technique. You can also switch to an ingredient list that helps you plan your shopping list — if you don’t mind toting your DS to the commissary.
When you’ve assembled all of your ingredients, the program gives you vocal as well as text instructions for preparation. And so you won’t get your DS dirty, you can simply say "continue" to move to the next step.
The program also offers functions that make it more like a cooking instructor than a cookbook. It offers preparation tips, ingredient alternatives and how-to videos ranging from slicing veggies to gutting a squid.
My wife and daughter decided to give it a shot. They instantly fell in love with the recipe-finding and planning functions and spent quite a while scanning and discussing the recipes. They settled on preparing Chicken Satay from Indonesia, Indonesian Fried Rice and Mango Pudding from China.
They encountered a few snags along the way to the dinner table. For example, the recipe called for canned mango, but they could only find fresh. The program didn’t offer any indication of how much fresh mango equaled the required amount of canned. They also found that the "continue" function responded to any loud noise in the kitchen.
The biggest problem related to their desire to prepare several dishes at once. The program is only adept at handling once recipe at a time.
Despite a few gripes, they enjoyed using "Personal Trainer: Cooking" and plan to use it again. More importantly, what they prepared was very delicious.
Platform: Nintendo DSOn the Web: personal trainercooking.com
