Make Your Own Family Cook Book And Memories
Synopsis
Make a treasured memory for your family.
Your Own Cook Book
Begin by sending a letter to your relatives, asking everybody to remit one or more of their 'specialties' by a certain date. In the letter, make certain to encourage the submission of recipes that have been passed down from former generations, along with a story or pic of the family member best recognized for the recipe. Invite memories of times spent cooking and/or eating together, as well as pics of holiday and other family get-togethers.
Ideas for encouraging a response:
Ask those that can to send their recipes and stories by e-mail. You're not only more likely to get more submissions, but you'll likewise be able to cut and paste the recipes right into your final document.
Since e-mailing good quality graphics may be so painful for many, consider joining a photo share site to make it simpler for participants to upload their pics.
Set a deadline that lets family members have least a couple of weeks to accumulate together their recipes, but not so far out in the future that they forget about the project all together. You might also want to send a light reminder postcard or e-mail a week or two before the final submission deadline.
Coordinating the Recipes
There’s no one correct way to coordinate a cookbook. It truly depends on the recipes you've accumulated and your purpose in creating the cookbook. Some suggestions:
By class - appetizers, soups, salads, entrees and desserts
By persons - grandparents, cousins, and so forth.
By family - by family unit (Mom, Dad & kids) or branch of the genealogy (Grandma, Grandpa and all of their descendants)
By holiday - Christmastime, 4th of July, Thanksgiving
Once you've collected and organized the recipes and stories, it's time to sit down and plan the cookbook. The theme should be something which reflects your family, whether it’s a pic from a recent family reunion, an old family pic of a distant ancestor, or a design that celebrates your family's homeland or ethnic heritage.
When setting up the actual cookbook, you've 2 major options: you are able to either photocopy the original submitted forms (transcribing the ones sent by e-mail) or you are able to type everything into the computer for a more consistent format.
If you opt to use the computer to produce your cookbook, stick with simple fonts like Times Roman or Arial that are easy to read. Save ornamental fonts for chapter and recipe titles. Incorporate the pics and stories throughout the cookbook, in places where they enhance the recipes without obscuring them (on adjoining pages, for instance).
To make your cookbook simple to read, produce both a Table of Contents and an index.
Ideas for integrating family history into your cookbook
Make color copies or scans of family heirlooms that link up to cooking to utilize as a background behind a couple of the recipes. This may include items like an award won for a certain recipe, a press clipping about the family, a handwritten copy of the recipe which has been passed down through a lot of generations, special family table linens, or plane ticket from a family trip that produced a good recipe.
Write an intro to the cookbook, which shares the details of its production and how family members reacted to the project. Make certain to include the date!
Include a pic and short bio of the family members originally known for some of the more cherished recipes. If the family member is gone, a few short memory quotes about the person and their recipe from the descendants makes a nice touch.
You can find some free templates to get you started here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=cookbook&origin=CT010117232#ai:TC001018642|
Or create your entire book here:
http://freebies.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&ZTI=1&sdn=freebies&cdn=hobbies&tM=11&f=00&tt=11&bt=0&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.midwestliving.com/app/mycookbook/