About Grandma Pauline

Todd's Grandma A. (Pauline) was his maternal grandmother. She was born in Ontario in 1912 and passed away almost 12 years ago. She was a great cook with a lot of recipes to pass on from her farm life. When Todd and I were first married, I remember sitting in her kitchen copying out some of her delicious pickle recipes. Todd's Mom has a good memory of her mother's cooking and still uses a lot of her recipes today.

About Grandma Millie

Todd's Grandma R. (Mildred/Millie) was his paternal grandmother. She was born in 1910 in the Canadian Prairies of Saskatchewan. She died just over a year ago at nearly 99 (just 2 months shy). Throughout her life Grandma R. did a lot of entertaining and thus had quite a number of recipes to share with her family and friends.

About Grandma Doris

My Grandma M. (Doris) was my maternal grandmother. She was born in Quebec in 1921. Being a francophone, she was raised with traditional French Canadian cooking. My Grandfather was an anglophone, but being a fellow Quebecer, also spoke the French language. After the birth of their 4th child, they moved to Ontario where they raised a total of 8 English-speaking children on their farm.

I have memories of Grandma's cooking, since she did not pass away until the last decade. A lot of the recipes and memories attributed to Grandma M. have come from my mom, and aunts. I was also lucky to be passed on a cookbook of Grandma's which no one else seemed to want. When paging through the cookbook, I was very excited to discover some of Grandma's recipes in her own handwriting, sitting between the pages. Real treasures!

About Grandma Hilda

My Grandma A. (Hilda), my paternal grandmother, was born in 1914 in Montreal, Quebec. She passed away when I was 5 years old. I remember her, but only as a child would. Unfortunately, my father passed away about 6 years later and then the following year, my grandfather did too. For these reasons, I do not know a lot about my grandmother's recipes and cooking style. So, recipes for Hilda on here may be a bit lacking, but not for lack of not wishing they were there!

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.

Welcome

Welcome to Recipes from Grandma's Kitchen. This is where I am recording all the recipes that have been passed down to us from our Grandma's - both mine and my husband's. There is nothing like taste and smell to bring back cherished memories and I believe it is important to preserve these family recipes for future generations.

My interest in family recipes began in 2004 when I compiled a little booklet of recipes from my maternal Grandmother, Doris (Dorcas). She had passed away in 2003 and memories were still fresh. I asked for feedback from her four daughters and then compiled that into a booklet form. It took until 2008 for me to make another booklet. This time it was all about recipes from my husband Todd's paternal Grandmother, Mildred (Millie), who was still living at the time. Todd's aunt and mother were able to provide a lot of information and photos for this project. Then, later in the same year, I compiled another recipe book. This one on recipes from Todd's maternal Grandmother, Pauline, who was no longer living. My MIL and Todd's Aunt had lots of memories and recipes to pass along to this project as well. I haven't been able to come up with enough recipes for a booklet on my paternal Grandmother, Hilda, as she and my father both passed away when I was young. Before I knew enough to ask such questions. Sadly, there may be little content on Hilda's recipes here.

If you are thinking about gathering together a booklet on recipes from your grandmothers, please start now! If not for your sake, do it for your children's sake. Memories fade and little pieces of paper scribbled with a favourite family recipe have a way of going missing. Come by later for a more detailed post on how to do your own booklet of Recipes from Grandma's Kitchen.