Cheap UPC scanner is a go.

Linked to an online database might cost a small access fee, then not to hard to link to a recepie database of what stock you have on hand.

FWIW, lots of things were shown at various trade shows the past nearly 10 years with barcode scanners, for the kitchen ,to reack one's inventory.

As far as assigning a recipe to items you have try www.foodandwine.com . Go to the advanced section, hilight recipes, and you can type in up to two distinct items. It will whatever recipes it has using those two items. It is really a good program. You can filter the seach by course, ingredients, ethnic origin, and a number of other things. I've used it for a couple years.

I have to wonder if there isn't a web site somewhere that can sort more than two ingredients to disply recipies? I'd bet there is.

This is an Excellent idea. Something everyone deals with to one degree or another.

A small problem that needs to be solved is that we keep partial containers of spices, preserves, bags of rice and beans, nuts, and other produce on our shelves and in our refrigerator. Our inventory software says we have it on-hand, so it doesn't show it as being something we need to pick up at the store.

Then we get back and get to cooking, to find out we are short on a particular ingredient. Other people in the house cooking used some. How would we effortlessly feed in how much left we have so that we don't make multiple trips to the grocery store?

Obviously, the software can come up with a recommended list of recipes based upon what we appear to have on hand, and then press a function key to do a "Produce Availability" check. The program would step through each ingredient and you would enter in how much you have left of each ingredient. The program would then provide an accumulative "Grocery List" of what you need to buy.

Accumulative because you may be making other recipes as well for lunch, dinner, tommorrow, and a party on Thursday. As you checked stock the "Grocery List" would automatically add quantities needed and allow linking back to the recipes ingredient is used. This way if the ingredient is unavailable, the associated recipes can be deleted and the "Grocery List" updated by subtracting the related ingredients. Or, the program can recommend other similar recipes that do not use that particular ingredient and of which you have sufficient stores on-hand and an updated "Grocery List" without the ingredient that was unavailable.

Accessing inventory needs to be as fast and carefree as possible. A future option that may be available in the near future is an imaging camera that could detect how much is in each container. Can labels would be read for net weight and contents, spice bottles could be seen from the side and scan the label to determine quantity and contents, even looking down the throat of an opaque bottle could yeild quantity information. The location of the item might even be recorded by digitizing the pantry and kitchen areas. Intel has just started work to provide this imaging capability.

Excellent idea