Indie Developer Spotlight Promo

by Ben on February 11th, 2010

We’re participating in the Macworld 2010 Indie Developer Spotlight by offering SousChef for 20% off for the duration of the expo. The promo covers everything–full licenses, competitive upgrades and gifts.

Go here for more info on how to take advantage of the promotion.

The Indie Developer Spotlight also includes lots of other companies selling their software for 20% off, so go check it out!

Recipe Spotlight: Nabeyaki Udon

by Kurt on January 17th, 2010

We’ve decided that as developers of recipe management software, it might be fun for us to showcase some of our favorite recipes here on the blog from time to time.

I’m going first with “Nabeyaki Udon”, which I’ve uploaded to the cloud in its original form. This is a dish that my wife and I love to get at Japanese restaurants. It’s a sort of noodle soup in a fish-based broth. I’ve always wanted to try making it, but never thought I’d be able to find the ingredients. However, like most exotic foods, its always easier than you think once you start in on it.

The main thing that makes udon, well udon, is the noodles and broth. The noodles are easy. They boil like every other kind. The broth is simply a mix of dashi, mirin, and soy sauce. The dashi is simply a stock made from boiling bonito flakes in water, or just using a bonito packet like I did. Mirin is just a Japanese rice cooking wine.

Beyond that its just a mix of ingredients. The recipe calls for chicken, but we used shrimp and huge amount of shitake and some enoki mushrooms. Then we used bok choy instead of leaks just because leeks are such a pain to break down. We also added a few fish cake slices to that be found at the asian market.

So although there are a lot of pieces to the recipe, its all pretty easy and when it comes together it’s just as good as in the restaurant. What more can you ask?

To find this recipe in SousChef’s Recipe Cloud, simply select to search be “Recipe Name” in the search field and enter “Nabeyaki Udon”.

2009 End of Year Sale!

by Ben on December 21st, 2009

We’ve had an eventful year with much to celebrate! Now through January 1st use the coupon code “SOUSCHEF09″ and get 25% off SousChef. Remember, you can gift SousChef easily using our in-application store, just Download SousChef (if you haven’t already) and select “Buy SousChef…” from the SousChef menu.

SousChef 1.2.4 Released

by Kurt on December 18th, 2009

Today we released SousChef v1.2.4 (v723). This update fixes several bugs and adds a few features.

Version 1.2.4 fixes some errors that occurred during recipe editing. The process is now much more stable. Directions that seemed to disappear no longer do so. In addition, importing now functions correctly in Google Chrome, and improvements have been made to PDF import.

New features include coupon code support within the in-application store, and a Feedback option in the Help menu to make it easier for users to contact us directly within the program.

So, enjoy the latest version of SousChef v1.2.4, and continue to let us know how we can improve our software for you.

Download SousChef 1.2.4

SousChef 1.2.4 (v723) release notes (PDF)

New Acacia Tree Team Member

by Ben on December 14th, 2009

Acacia Tree Software would like to introduce the new member of it’s team. Kurt Tiede is taking over frontline support for our products, as well as helping out with our marketing projects.

Kurt comes to us from Network Solutions where he worked as a logo designer and webpage modification specialist. He has experience working with customers online, and also brings some marketing expertise in branding and design to Acacia Tree. Kurt is a graduate of Millikin University, a small liberal arts college in Decatur, Illinois, where he received a BFA in graphic design/illustration. On the side, Kurt also does graphic design for theatrical and other organizations, costuming, and draws comic books.

Kurt discovered Acacia Tree when he recently moved to the Athens, Ohio area with his wife so she could pursue a masters degree in theatrical lighting design at Ohio University. The Tiede’s are the proud parents of two cats, Midnight and Dori, and a goldfish named Leon. You can follow Kurt on Twitter: @KurtTiede.

ATSGenx: XML Generation for Cocoa

by Ben on December 9th, 2009

In an effort to be more active in the Cocoa developer community, we are releasing ATSGenx, an Objective-C wrapper for Genx by Tim Bray, a library for generating canonical XML.

ATSGenx is distributed under a very open license. You can basically do anything you want with it. Refer to the included Genx license for it’s own terms. ATSGenx has been tested on Mac OS X 10.6 but should work on iPhone as well. The zip file includes everything you should need to get started.

ATSGenx Project
ATSGenx 0.1

Comments are welcome. Enjoy.

Apple iPhone Tech Talk

by Ben on December 9th, 2009

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the Apple iPhone Tech Talk in New York City. Tech Talk content is similar to Apple’s WWDC sessions but much more distilled. Because of this you are presented with, in a one day event, all the things that Apple feels are most important or generally applicable when building iPhone apps. It is hard to explain how useful this is. In particular the sessions on user interface design and web technologies were outstanding.

What does this mean for SousChef? It means that SousChef for iPhone has gotten a nice bump of inspiration and some more ideas that I think will make it a killer recipe app for iPhone when it comes out. As always, we don’t comment on release dates since we’ll invariably miss them and make you unhappy.

SousChef 1.2.3 Released

by Kurt on November 24th, 2009

This morning we released SousChef v1.2.3 (v712). This update fixes several bugs and improves stability.

Version 1.2.3 fixes a crash during cloud searches performed by some PowerPC machines, and problems opening imported VRC and MacGourmet files. Problems occurring when certain recipes with images were posted to Blogger now work correctly. Stability during recipe editing has been improved, especially when removing items from recipes. SousChef now warns you before deleting a collection or folder of recipes. In addition to these, we’ve made a number of smaller improvements and bug fixes.

Download SousChef 1.2.3 Now

We hope you enjoy the latest version of SousChef, and continue to let us know how we can improve our software for you.

1.2.2 Update

by Ben Lachman on September 9th, 2009

We’ve released SousChef 1.2.2 (v643) to address a crash that some users were experiencing when searching the cloud. This update is available via auto-update or for downloading here.

Just to note, the crash was due to a change in the GCC 4.2 tool chain that only occurs when building on 10.5.x (the versions of SousChef that were built using GCC 4.2 on Snow Leopard don’t exhibit the same crash).

SousChef 1.2.1 Released

by Ben Lachman on September 8th, 2009

We released SousChef 1.2.1 (v641) today. This update fixes many bugs and introduces Snow Leopard support officially (previously available in beta).

A short list of fixes and improvements follows:

Bug Fixes

  • Snow Leopard compatibility fixes
  • Autocomplete is more subtle
  • Focus doesn’t jump to previously selected text fields when editing recipes
  • Can now reorganize recipe collections within a folder
  • Fixed a bug where printing or mailing a grocery list wouldn’t work with a blank ingredient
  • Fixed issues where you could select and edit outside the text fields
  • Fixed a crash involving recipe importing after deleting
  • Fixed a bug where ‘$’ in your recipe would stop you from blogging a recipe

This update may be downloaded here.