The present invention is generally related to a system for managing recipes using a web server and an off-line software application. A user using the software application will be able to create, display, print, modify, and search recipes and menus. The web server will be a recipe store where a user can buy and download individual recipes and electronic cookbooks into the software application secure database storage. The software application has a web interface to communicate with the recipe store, allowing the user to have an extended set of facilities like posting his/her own recipes for sale, requesting restaurant and food store services for a given recipe or menu, requesting the restoration of their recipe database, and receiving suggested drinking dates for their current wine inventory. The software application comes in two versions: the read-only and the all-inclusive version. With the read-only version a user will not be able to create or modify a recipe or use any of the extended facilities. The read-only version will be free to download from the recipe store.