Folks with specific food allergies, dietary restriction, and picky palates will also love the ability to track dishes and ingredients they can’t have. It’s important to note you can hand-pick ingredients you do not eat in the options menu. This will mark which dishes contain ingredients you’ve excluded from your diet, when browsing the recipes.

Other minor touches like a fully functioning kitchen timer, a shopping list, a built-in calculator, a tracking system that tells you how many times you’ve created a particular meal, and a calendar that tracks what meals you’ve made and on what days you’ve made them. A cooking A-Z section provides a wealth of kitchen knowledge, from ingredient substitution and terminology to cooking tips and homemade ingredients. Also, 20 short video clips provide further instruction.

A vibrant and warm presentation gives Personal Trainer: Cooking a lot of personality for a glorified cookbook. Your personal trainer and narrator, a simple animated line-drawing of a mustachioed chef, has a pleasant voice and a cadence that can be sped up or slowed down to suit your taste. He’s a cheerful, friendly fellow that dishes out good advice and congratulations for every dish you make. During the food prep and cooking process, your chef buddy narrates each step of the instructions in a simple, easy-to-understand way.

Easily the best feature of the entire game, the voice recognition software lets you cook hands-free. In fact, the whole step-by-step food preparation process is excellently executed. The chef trainer narrates each step and then waits for your instruction before proceeding. Though you can navigate through the recipe with the stylus, it’s far better to do so verbally by saying “last step,” “repeat,” and “continue.” At any time in the recipe when additional instruction or clarification is available, another option will pop up. Saying “more details” then brings up the additional information, before returning to the recipe when you’re ready. For safety reasons, each recipe begins with the preparation phase before completing to the cooking phase.

DS owners who haven’t got a clue on how to cook but are willing to give it a shot will find Personal Trainer: Cooking to be a highly rewarding investment. This package surpasses the novelty of having a slew of recipes and a personal backup up chef teaching you the ropes. It can open up a whole realm of possibilities for gamers who wouldn’t step within 10 feet of a cookbook otherwise. At a price of $20, your stomach will thank you.

By Nathan Meunier
CCC Staff Contributor