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Mom's whipping up dinner
Food is an important part of our lives. Food is comfort. Food is love. Favorite foods and customs make each family unique. Some foods are a reflection of your family's ethnic heritage, like sauerkraut with the Thanksgiving meal. Others may just have become tradition because someone tried the recipe and everyone enjoyed it. Either way, these recipes are important to the family.
Creating a family cookbook is a great way to remember and celebrate the members of your family and the events that included those foods.
1. Start with your recollection of what was served on special occasions. Did you have turkey and all the trimmings on both Thanksgiving and Christmas? Did you have sauerkraut with your turkey dinner?
2. Gather your recipes. If they're written on recipe cards, it's a great idea to scan them and print them for the scrapbook. In a digital scrapbook - a great idea if you'll want more than one copy - the scanned images of the recipe cards will go into the book just like a photograph.
3. Gather photos of the person the recipe came from or the person that always made the dish for family functions.
4. If you have photos of the completed recipe, that's perfect. If your scrapbook will be a work in progress, make a note to take photos of the dishes the next time they are prepared.
5. Along with the recipes and the person who always made the recipe, remember the occasions that are connected to the recipes and your feelings about the food or the occasions. Did you always look forward to Easter dinner because that was the only time your family had pickled eggs?
6. Be sure to remember and document the special tools used and even the food disasters. Is there a dish that only your grandmother could make and no one else could duplicate it even with her recipe? It took years for my family members to realize that the cast iron pot that my grandmother owned was the key that was missing whenever anyone tried to duplicate her chili recipe! Perhaps you have a similar story that is worth recording.
Many scrapbooking companies are catching on to the importance of food in our lives and carry papers and stickers or digital kits that make creating a family cookbook a simple and fun project.
