Last night my boyfriend’s mother came storming in, purple dress in a flutter, and shouted in her usual asking manner, “You better make something delicious tonight! I told Aubrey you went to culinary school!” True, I did, and I do enjoy piecing together ridiculously immaculate caramel shards and tempered chocolate as much as the next Type A pastry chef, but sometimes the rustic homestyle dessert fares much better than those eye-catching, Leaning Tower of Pisa St. Honore cakes – which, honestly, adopt the taste of sugared cardboard after a moment’s rest. Normally, I would make a simple fruit tart, maybe with lemon curd whipped with mascarpone in place of heavily sweet pastry cream, and fresh seasonal berries on top in festive rows of color, a light wash of apricot preserves to glaze. How very Bay area of me.

However, last night I just wanted to make something on the spot, something quick and easy with the ingredients I had on hand – assuming, of course, I had all the regular foundations of flour, butter, eggs, maybe a liquid of some kind. Fortunately for me, I had a fair amount of oranges, a tub of sour cream, apricot preserves from Frog Hollow Farms, and a wondrously heaping bag of almonds, a combination that prompted me to create an Orange Sour Cream Cake with Almond Frangipane, and an Apricot Brandy coulis to soak. Totally delicious, and boozy enough to make you swoon should you not normally care for orange desserts. I’d like to think my natural instincts help me in pulling off Iron chef type baking miracles, but many people do not have a natural inclination toward baking, or cooking, just as many do not have an eye for detail or a nose for flavor pairings. I really feel for those mothers who have to think creatively every day when preparing delicious but healthy meals for their family. Having a compendium of recipes and cookbooks is a must for any home cook, because even after hours in the kitchen, cooking for a family is a huge chore, and can wipe the creative insights from any great cook.

With people trying to cut corners in cost, buying cookbooks is often not a high priority, especially when nice, reputed ones in laminated covers are priced in the range of $25-$60. And oftentimes you need consider special dietary needs, or cuisines, that may require different cookbook or online sources.

That’s why the Whole Foods Market Recipes app on the iPhone is a must-have for any home cook or burgeoning chef. It has everything you could need in a neat, condensed package, with thousands of recipes easily searchable by course, category, or special diet; and best of all, it’s completely free to download. Whole Foods’s popularity in recent years only improves the repute of their recipe database, as most faithful shoppers can attest to the greatness of their Cabbage Crunch salad, their Vegan German Chocolate Chip cookies in the bakery, and much more. And since the entire mission of Whole Foods is to cater to a healthy, organic population, all diets under the sun, from vegan, gluten-free, low sodium, wheat-free, even high fiber are available for you to search.

The most basic search function is obviously the “Course” tab, which has you cycle through a scrolling tab to search by appetizers, breakfast and brunch, breads and muffins, desserts, dressings, main dishes, soups, salads, and so forth. The “Category” tab has options like budget, cooking with kids, make-ahead, no cook, and quick and easy, which you may search for along with, say, a dessert course that is also gluten-free. After figuring out what you need, the app can also search for the Whole Foods Markets closest to you, so getting what you need is easier than ever.

Let’s search for a recipe, shall we? I will search for a budget-friendly, vegan soup. If I want, I may enter in a keyword to assist my already refined search. Since I feel like a vegetable soup, I will type in “bell pepper” and then tap “search.” My search gives me a “Quick Vegetarian Gumbo,” which sounds perfectly delightful. Once tapping it, I am shown its nutritional attributes, along with calories and serving yield, and the option to “Add to Favorites” or email to myself. A bar along the page’s top also informs me of what ingredients I’ll need and the method to prepare it. Especially handy are the coded symbols that represent various characteristics, like “G” for gluten-fre, and “HF” for high fiber. The Quick Vegetarian Gumbo, apparently, is gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, vegetarian, high fiber, and wheat-free. To look up these symbols, tap the “About” tab on the page’s bottom to access an easy glossary.

The absolute best part of this app has to do with those scatter-brained nights of not knowing what to make with the ingredients you have on hand. Tap the “On Hand” tab to enter in up to three ingredients so Whole Foods may assist in your creative process. I decided to type in ingredients similar to the ones I had last night – oranges, almonds, and milk – and, surprisingly, one of the recipes Whole Foods summoned for me is called “King’s Cake with Almonds and Candied Citrus Zest,” which is not at all unlike what I, myself, prepared. This feature could be extremely useful for those harried mothers who have no idea how to combine yogurt with fruit in a more fun and exciting way than simply dumping the yogurt on top of chopped fruit. Just to test the limits of this feature, I amusingly entered in albacore, nutmeg, and cacao, to see if there would be any completely wrong results with only albacore highlighted – or, to my perverse hope, some gross secret Whole Foods concoction of Cacao crusted Albacore with nutmeg mango salsa – but alas, the feature was too smart and read only “No matching recipes,” otherwise decoded as “Are you ****ing crazy?”

With a massive compendium of healthy and sure to be delicious recipes by that most amazing and expensive food warehouse known as Whole Foods, home cooks will appreciate having an easier way of making dinner more fun, more nutritious, and maybe even lighter on the wallet and waistline.