Sometime around the turn of the millennium my mother decided that what this family really needed was a cookbook, a collection of recipes from all across the family, and that she was the person to make this happen.
It turned out she was right about that.
In that pre-social-media age she sent out emails and made phone calls and in the end she collected a fair number of recipes including more than a few from her own parents, who had recently passed away. That might have been part of it, now that I think of it – a desire to see those old favorites preserved and passed down. My mother was a storyteller and she put little introductions in front of most of the recipes sharing some of those stories and had a forward to talk about the project, and at some point we all got a small package with a 3-ring binder full of family favorites.
It proved to be very useful, in the end. Not only was it a nice way to honor the various family members who contributed, but we’ve been making things out of that cookbook for nearly a quarter century now.
Three cheers for Aunt Linda’s Baked Pineapple, without which no holiday meal is complete!
But that was a surprisingly long time ago, and some of the people who contributed to that cookbook are no longer here and some other people in the family who are routinely cooking meals for themselves and others these days weren’t even born yet, so last Christmas my cousin Chris and I decided that what this family really needed was a Revised & Expanded Second Edition of the family cookbook and that we were the people to make this happen.
We were right about that too. I tell you, this family has some pretty good fortune-telling skills. It’s a shame we don’t play the lottery more often.
Chris and I put out a call to all of the various branches of the family early this year – or at least as many as we could. There were some we inadvertently missed and not everyone was interested, but over the next few months recipes came pouring in from all over the US – we’re a pretty spread out bunch these days, especially when you expand out to include all of the various in-laws who have made our lives richer over the years.
We are legion.
Chris is a graphic designer by trade so he handled all of the layout and artwork for the book. I’m a word guy who actually enjoys copy-editing, so a fair amount of that ended up as mine, and I ended up in charge of soliciting and receiving recipes though in the end both of us did that anyway. Chris also understands how Google Docs work so all I had to do was send him everything I received and then log in and make edits.
I found a printer here in Our Little Town who would put it all together for a reasonable sum, and they did a very nice job of it. It’s nearly two hundred pages long, this revised edition, and nicely coil-bound. I gave them the pdf that Chris finalized and then picked up the completed cookbooks a couple of weeks ago.
The printers also advised me to get it copyrighted, to avoid some copyright troll with a bot scraping Google Docs and publishing it as their own. That process turned out to be fairly simple, so now all three of us – me, Chris, and my mom – are listed as the copyright holders for the book. Family can share it, of course. But no bots.
There are two post offices here in Our Little Town – a big one out in the mall sprawl land, and a much smaller one downtown that’s only open around lunchtime. Not many people even know it exists, which is why I went there to mail them all off. It’s much nicer when you’re not holding anyone up and you can stand there and have a conversation with the postal worker who’s cranking out the mailing labels, one at a time.
They started to land last week and so far people seem to like them. This makes me happy.
It turned out she was right about that.
In that pre-social-media age she sent out emails and made phone calls and in the end she collected a fair number of recipes including more than a few from her own parents, who had recently passed away. That might have been part of it, now that I think of it – a desire to see those old favorites preserved and passed down. My mother was a storyteller and she put little introductions in front of most of the recipes sharing some of those stories and had a forward to talk about the project, and at some point we all got a small package with a 3-ring binder full of family favorites.
It proved to be very useful, in the end. Not only was it a nice way to honor the various family members who contributed, but we’ve been making things out of that cookbook for nearly a quarter century now.
Three cheers for Aunt Linda’s Baked Pineapple, without which no holiday meal is complete!
But that was a surprisingly long time ago, and some of the people who contributed to that cookbook are no longer here and some other people in the family who are routinely cooking meals for themselves and others these days weren’t even born yet, so last Christmas my cousin Chris and I decided that what this family really needed was a Revised & Expanded Second Edition of the family cookbook and that we were the people to make this happen.
We were right about that too. I tell you, this family has some pretty good fortune-telling skills. It’s a shame we don’t play the lottery more often.
Chris and I put out a call to all of the various branches of the family early this year – or at least as many as we could. There were some we inadvertently missed and not everyone was interested, but over the next few months recipes came pouring in from all over the US – we’re a pretty spread out bunch these days, especially when you expand out to include all of the various in-laws who have made our lives richer over the years.
We are legion.
Chris is a graphic designer by trade so he handled all of the layout and artwork for the book. I’m a word guy who actually enjoys copy-editing, so a fair amount of that ended up as mine, and I ended up in charge of soliciting and receiving recipes though in the end both of us did that anyway. Chris also understands how Google Docs work so all I had to do was send him everything I received and then log in and make edits.
I found a printer here in Our Little Town who would put it all together for a reasonable sum, and they did a very nice job of it. It’s nearly two hundred pages long, this revised edition, and nicely coil-bound. I gave them the pdf that Chris finalized and then picked up the completed cookbooks a couple of weeks ago.
The printers also advised me to get it copyrighted, to avoid some copyright troll with a bot scraping Google Docs and publishing it as their own. That process turned out to be fairly simple, so now all three of us – me, Chris, and my mom – are listed as the copyright holders for the book. Family can share it, of course. But no bots.
There are two post offices here in Our Little Town – a big one out in the mall sprawl land, and a much smaller one downtown that’s only open around lunchtime. Not many people even know it exists, which is why I went there to mail them all off. It’s much nicer when you’re not holding anyone up and you can stand there and have a conversation with the postal worker who’s cranking out the mailing labels, one at a time.
They started to land last week and so far people seem to like them. This makes me happy.
This is the picture Chris chose for the cover. That’s my grandmother – my mom’s mother – and my dad in the little yard behind my grandparents’ house. The white building in the background was an octagonal gazebo that my grandfather used as a tool shed. It’s Labor Day, 1967, and the family has gathered to celebrate and eat, there being precious little distance between those two activities as far as my family is concerned. I’m somewhere running around the yard, a toddler dressed in something adorable no doubt. Neither Chris nor any of our siblings have been born yet, but my second cousins are both there. I can tell that my dad made the hamburgers because he firmly believed that hamburgers should be roughly spherical objects and dismissed anything more disc-like as “hockey pucks.”
I’m older now than my grandmother was in that photo. So is Chris. Time flies.
I love that they look happy. I love that we can continue this tradition of sharing good food with good people.
I did a much smaller version for our kids years ago. Our son still uses it occasionally. His ex-vegetarian daughter told me her favorite recipe was porcupine meatballs, go figure!
ReplyDeleteMy mother had something like a family recipe book. Still, it only contained some simple, common recipes, and none of the traditional Swiss/German recipes that were part of the holiday/special occasions. She learned those recipes from her mother, who learned them from her mother, and nobody ever bothered to write any of that down. I’ve found some similar traditional recipes online, but they aren’t quite the same.
ReplyDeleteSue’s family, on the other hand, wrote down a lot of their traditional Danish recipes, and I’ve put them all on this computer and passed around copies of those files to everyone in the family who wanted them. Yup, all three of them. The biggest issue we’ve run into with making any of those dishes is that some of the ingredients are not available in the US, the second, and one that we are dealing with at the moment, is that some of the ingredients are no longer available in the form called for in the recipe, and we’re having difficulty converting/substituting those ingredients.
All told, we’ve got about +/-30 Danish recipes, and +/-5 that have been hobbled together from my family.
I’m going to toss out a wild guess here and presume that a significant percentage of your recipes are either Italian or Mediterranean, neither of which are a big part of our culinary repertoire. And the stuff we do make would, in all likelihood, be considered an abomination in your household. 🤔🧐🫣🥰 Yeah … pretty certain about that.
Lucy
@Julie - people change, I guess. We have at least one former vegetarian in the family, and several current vegans. More power to them! Fortunately my family has always taken to heart the words of Epictetus: "Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent." I'm glad your son is still getting use out of it!
ReplyDelete@Lucy - Chris and I decided that we'd keep the focus on the things that people make for friends and family, the ordinary dishes that you can shop for without a list because you know how to make it already, rather than the big special meals (though there are a few of those there too, because they're fun and why not?). It's good to write them down, though. My grandmother never did, but fortunately my grandfather followed her around with a notecard and some measuring spoons at some point and wrote them down for her. My grandmother was very firmly of the "You put in enough, and cook it until it's done" school of culinary expertise.
I'm sorry to hear that so many of your recipes have vanished that way, though. And glad that at least Sue's family got some down in writing. It is hard to find specific ingredients, but in this internet age of late-stage capitalism it's possible to find more than ever as long as you're willing to pay the cost. Converting things is always tricky, though - good luck!
Yes, a lot of it is Italian-American (which is a very different animal than Italian, I have come to realize), but there are recipes in there that are Ukrainian, Swedish, mid-century American (lots of cans), and so on - we're our own melting pot. They're all good and well tested. Not much fish, to be honest, though some.
Only three people wanted the recipes? Sigh. That may change later, I suppose, as people's interests change. I hope so.