Creating Your Own Family Cookbook
By Janet Peterson
Nearly every family has its own particular
food traditions. For some families, it’s Grandma’s Pumpkin
Chiffon Pie at Thanksgiving. Other families savor Grandpa’s
barbecued ribs or Aunt Jill’s Great Green Beans. Still other
families claim their brand of homemade ice cream as the
best. Food brings families together for special occasions,
such as holidays, and celebrations of new babies, graduations,
and birthdays, as well as for everyday dinners.
Many a phone call is made from daughter to
mother or sister to sister to get the exact ingredients
and directions for favorite dishes. Often recipes are passed
around from cousin to cousin or handed down from generation
to generation. They are usually transmitted via carefully
printed recipe cards, quick notes on scratch paper, or efficient
e-mail. Personal encounters in the kitchen are a wonderful
way to share delectable foods as well as to teach culinary
skills. However, since many extended family members live
apart from each other and are often scattered around the
country, those kitchen teaching moments and joint cooking
efforts don’t happen regularly.
Preserving those treasured family recipes
in a cookbook is a wonderful way to collect the family’s
favorite recipes, share anecdotes about the food as well
as family members, transmit cooking knowledge to the next
generation, and to unite the family. Having a cookbook in
hand with, for example, Bywater
Family Recipes, provides each person with a strong sense
of “our family.”
Shortly after they married, David and Stephanie
Bywater decided to gather favorite
recipes and create a family cookbook for Christmas gifts
for the extended Bywater family.
They requested recipes, input them into the computer, edited
and proofread, then printed, collated, and bound the collection.
The happily received cookbook is dedicated to Dave’s grandparents,
Milton and Lilas Bywater,
who “have shared their love, time, and life with each of
us. We hope this cookbook will help remind us to always
emulate their great examples.”
Bywater
Family Recipes made great Christmas gifts for extended
family members.
Karen Tall Sadler put together Tasty Tall
Treasures, a 400-page collection of the extended Tall
family, whose roots are in Idaho Falls, Idaho, but whose family members
now live in various states. Filled with hundreds of recipes
and illustrated with clip art, it is a tasty and fun cookbook.
Spiral notebook bindings, which were used by Karen Tall
Sadler for her Tasty Tall Treasures, are worth their
weight in gold.
Grace Ivory Little and Jane Ivory Metcalf
gathered their mother’s recipes, added some from extended
family members and friends, and printed several thousand
copies. Jane said, “Mother is a fabulous cook. She is always
entertaining, and when we started going through her drawers
and cupboards, we realized we had an amazing collection.”
Included are family stories about some of the recipes.
The sisters are donating proceeds from the cookbook to the
Make-A-Wish Foundation, their mother’s favorite charity
[1]
Before those remarkable recipes of your family
get lost, are forgotten, or are irretrievably hidden in
a family member’s recipe box, form a small committee and
create your own family cookbook.
Here are some tips for producing a treasured
cookbook:
* Decide whose cookbook it is: How
many generations do you want to include in the family cookbook?
Tasty Tall Treasures is “a family cookbook from the
children, grandchildren, great grand-children, and great-great
grandchildren of William A. Tall and Belle Kinghorn
Tall.”
* Decide on a reasonable time frame
for publishing the cookbook. Allow extra time for responses
and the production work.
* Get as complete a list as possible
of family members’ addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail
addresses from the family historian or from heads of families.
If there is an upcoming family reunion, you will be able
to update your list then.
* Write a letter stating your purpose
in gathering favorite family recipes, with specific instructions
on the kinds and number of recipes, format for submission,
and whether you want anecdotes and stories included. Be
sure to state a deadline; then know that you’ll probably
have to extend it. If you plan to have family members purchase
cookbooks, mention the approximate cost.
* Utilize e-mail as much as possible,
which will save on mailing costs and save you time in typing
recipes.
* Decide on recipe categories and
create a computer file for each division.
* Choose a format for recipe presentation
and standardize the recipes as you input them. For instance,
do you want to write out cup or abbreviate it as
C. Do you want to use the symbol for degree or write
it out? Do you want to number instructions or present them
in paragraph form? Decide whether each recipe will state
number of servings. Do you want to have recipe titles reflect
family members (i.e, “Julie’s
Birthday Carrot Cake”)? If a submitted recipe lists a small
can of mushrooms or a large can of tomatoes, do you want
to list them by ounces?
* After typing recipes, proofread
them carefully. Enlist your committee members to help you
with this essential task.
* Select type font and size as well
as paper size. Decide what artwork or photos you want to
include, if any.
* Collate pages and proofread again.
* Decide how many copies you will
print in your first edition.
* Compare prices at various copy
shops or printers for copying, collating, and binding. Printing
is expensive, but cost per unit decreases with larger numbers
printed. You might even consider purchasing your own copier
if you are going to print a large number of copies and you’ll
have it for future use. If someone in the family has a copier
at home or in their office, talk to him or her about using
it.
* Distribute copies of your own family
cookbook to family members. They will be thrilled with it!
* Enjoy the satisfaction of drawing
your family members closer together and of doing significant
family history work.
