Make Your Own Recipes from Grandma's Kitchen Booklet

You will find it is a lot of work to compile a cookbook, but well worth it in the end. The gathering of content, organizing and compiling it, editing it, and finally binding it all together can surely be a daunting task.

GATHERING CONTENT

If your grandmother is still living, then begin by paying

her a visit. Ask to make copies of her favourite recipes. Som

e may be handwritten o

n scraps of paper, or on recipe cards, or you may find some are clippings from a newspaper or magazine. It is nice to have her handwriting also!

Next, send an email or letter to your grandmother's children and grandchildren. Ask them for the following:

- copies of grandma's recipes

- photos of grandma working in the kitchen or serving at her table,

working in her garden, or any others that may seem applicable to this topic

- memories or anecdotes they have about grandma's cooking in general or about a specific

recipe (e.g. What did she serve for Sunday dinner? Did she do Christmas baking? Did she have a garden? What was her specialty meal? Did she entertain a lot? etc.)

When asking for information for a project like this, it's a good idea to set a deadline for

submissions.

ORGANIZING THE INFO

You may receive a lot of recipes by email. This is great, because the info is already typed out and it will be easier to copy and paste it into your cookbook later. For now, to organize what you are receiving, be sure and have a folder for each grandmother's recipes. Then create a sub folder within each main folder for the different categories of foods. E.g. Appetizers, Main Course, Desserts. etc. Also create a folder for photos and another for memories.

You can use any word processing document to record your recipes and memories, but I usually use Microsoft Word. As each recipe is received, copy it into the document. You can make several separate documents depending on the categories you have selected (e.g. main course, etc.) and put the recipes in alphabetical order as you key them in. For recipes that are scanned, whether they be handwritten or a clipping, it is a good idea to type them in as well. Often the handwriting or old print is hard to decipher when scanning or photocopying. You can still keep some of these for images to illustrate your cookbook though.

In addition, it is helpful to use a spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel for recording an index and to keep track of what you have received and from whom. This will also help when you go to begin numbering the pages for an actual table of contents. As each recipe is received, be sure and record it into your spreadsheet and list the source as well as if it is a scanned recipe or a typed out one (so you can locate it easier).

For memories, keep these in a document as well. You can categorize them into different groups depending on what they are referring to. For example, if a memory has to do with your grandma's garden, then perhaps it would be suited for a recipe category on vegetable dishes. You can intersperse the memories in with the recipes so it flows nicely.

As photos are received, be sure and rename the photos with the person's name and date it was taken.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Once your recipe booklet is all compiled, be sure and include an introduction to say who your grandma was and a little about her. You can also include some of your own memories in this section. Make a title page and an index as well.

You can then choose to print out your cookbook and photos and manually turn it into a booklet format and bind it yourself, or you can do it digitally. The latter will look more professional and it will also allow you to save it to CD and then share copies more easily with family members. You can use digital scrapbooking software to do this yourself and even print the end result yourself or have it printed professionally. If you are binding it yourself, there a couple of different products out on the market that will help. One is the Bind-it-All, made by Zutter (for spiral ring binding) and another is a cerlox binding machine (for a plastic comb binding method).

Note: The top photo depicts the recipe book I made for my husband's maternal Grandmother, Millie. This one was printed at home and bound with a cerlox binding machine. The other pictures show a recipe book I made for my husband's maternal Grandmother, Pauline. This one was made digitally using online software from ScrapBlog. They printed and bound it as well.