Every once in awhile I take a break, sit down with a cup of tea, and re-read some of my favorite old cookbooks. The most fascinating thing about reading old cookbooks is the history they tell us about the people who lived in a certain neighborhood during a specific time period.
That is perhaps one of the beauties of making your own family cookbook – you have control over favorite heirloom recipes, as well as a time capsule of all the people in your family. Read the rest of this entry »
I have a few recipes for homemade gifts from the kitchen in a special section of my family cookbook. Whenever I need an idea for a quick gift, this “Homemade Gifts” section of my family cookbook never fails to inspire me or solve my immediate gift need.
Even if I don’t have all the ingredients for a quick homemade gift from the kitchen, it is usually very easy to shop for the missing items since most recipes are made with standard measurements and readily-available package sizes. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, d a r n. “They’ve” found frozen water on the moon.
Not unripe cheese (or even little green men).
Ho Hum. I was so hoping for cheese. Any color of cheese.
Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, I love cheese. My arteries probably have something to say about that, but, we’ll worry about that later….Meanwhile, it is time to stock up on some of the most favored cheeses in the U.S. for making holiday party spreads and holiday party snacking trays. Read the rest of this entry »
We are so excited to report that our Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software has inspired one of our customers to publish her second recipe book and sell it on Amazon.com.
That’s right! High school English teacher Kathryn M. Carriere of Houston, Texas, published her second recipe book in July called Spirits for the Mind and Body: 2101 Cocktail and Alcoholic Beverages. It is a whopping 548 pages and features the classic Celtic design template from our Matilda software.
Kathryn says she discovered the software after she published her first cookbook, 74 Great-Tasting Chili Recipes, which is also available on Amazon.com. That cookbook was one of her biggest challenges, she says, because she wanted to prove something to herself and to others. With the support of a close friend and two colleagues, Kathryn climbed her Mt. Everest. Once the 164-page book was completed, she was energized, enabled, and empowered to do more.
“However, I realized that I could do better. That led me to Matilda’s software and the second book. I tried the demo of Matilda and it was what I was looking for in terms of helping me organize my cookbooks the way I wanted them. The third book is now completely done (but not published yet), and I am working on a fourth book.”
Using the recipe template in Matilda for her second recipe book, Kathryn was able to categorize her beverage recipes into clear sections to make them easier to find, such as: Beer Mug, Brandy Snifter, Champagne, Cocktail, Collins, Coupette, Highball, Irish Mug, Old-Fashioned, Pousse-Café, Punch Bowl, Red Wine, Shot Glass, Whiskey Sour, and White Wine.
Kathryn’s first book took 3 months to get published, but only 6 weeks for the second book. She used an on-demand publisher (Trafford Publishing), which included marketing to Amazon.com as part of the package. Now she hopes to “continue writing cookbooks as well as writing novels and travel essays on places that I visit.”
We certainly do wish Kathryn well on her next publishing endeavors! You know, we would never have heard of Huckleberry Finn, Robert’s Rules of Order, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ulysses, or Walden, if the authors hadn’t had the courage to self-publish. You roar girl!
Happy Cookbook Authoring,
Matilda
We are getting closer to the holidays, and before you know it, we’ll all be planning our simple-to-elaborate menus. For some of us, selecting wines to go with our menus can be a bit of a challenge. Narrowing down the food selection helps, especially when whining about which wine to serve with what.
There really is no reason to whine about wine. Over the years, I’ve found that most people (aka guests) enjoy whatever a host or hostess chooses to serve (or they bring their own!). Read the rest of this entry »
Talk about truth in food labeling! Seems like we’ve all been duped in the U.S.A. for a very long time by our food marketing folks. Everywhere you look in supermarkets, sweet potatoes are called yams, and “yams” are called yams even when they are sweet potatoes.
How in the heck can we tell what we’re buying when most of us have never seen a real yam next to a sweet potato, and wouldn’t know a yam even if we got slapped in the face with marshmallow cream? Read the rest of this entry »
Went to a cooking show last night and it was so much fun. The cooking demonstrator onstage created 10 different recipes over two hours, including appetizers, entrees and desserts:
APPETIZERS
Fall Harvest Salad
Smoked Salmon & Chives Cheesecake (also great as a party food) Read the rest of this entry »
We often get inquiries from customers about what type of paper to purchase for printing a cookbook on a home printer. Sounds like a straightforward question, but it can be a bit complicated because there are many types of paper out there to confuse you.
First, you want to choose a paper (aka “stock”) that fits the kind of printer you have. Some papers will say on the label that they are suitable for either inkjet or laser printers, or both. These papers have a better surface texture (aka “finish”) than plain copy paper, and they will produce nicer cookbook photos in either color or black-and-white. Read the rest of this entry »
I have just returned from a Halloween party where the most disgusting, delicious, hilarious, and cleverly horrible dessert was served. Kitty Litter Cake.
Kitty Litter Cake is a concoction of demented minds, yet it garnered lots of laughs and marvels at how it actually mimics “the real thing,” even down to the tormented Tootsie Rolls used to imitate cat poop. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes simple food is the best. The clever cook is one who adds spices, herbs and other inexpensive ingredients to simple food and ends up with a glorious dish that even food snobs cannot resist.
Often called international street food or peasant ethnic food (I hope because of its basic close-to-the-earth goodness), many of these savory simple food dishes are made of common staples such as grains, root vegetables, and tough scraps of meat that do well with patience.
Here are some of my favorite international simple foods:
Italian
Pasta with chopped tomatoes, chopped basil, olive oil, & freshly grated parmesan cheese.
Mexican
Beans & rice with cilantro and salsa.
Thai
Pad Thai noodles fragrant with lime juice, garlic, chiles, tamarind, and chopped peanuts.
Indian
Grilled chicken legs marinated with yogurt and at least seven spices.
Chinese
Hot Pot, a shared soup made with meats, seafood, tofu, greens, other vegetables, and condiments chosen by each person at your table.
Vietnamese
Bahn Mi sandwiches of cold cuts, pate, cilantro, shredded carrot & Daikon radish slaw, on crusty baguettes.
Arabic
Hummus sprinkled with sumac on pita bread.
Some of these simple food dishes are stunningly good and deserve a spot in your family cookbook. They were developed by budget-conscious cooks with inventive culinary skills passed down through many generations, and are indeed worthy of remembering. (I know I do at every opportunty!)
Happy simple food cookbooking,
Matilda
Preserving family treasures, including recipes for a family recipe cookbook or recipe scrapbook, can be a simple matter if you know what you’re doing. Ever since the Library of Congress lamented the loss of deteriorating books during the late 1980s, we’ve been hearing more and more about conservation techniques to save family heirlooms and museum displays.
Experts tell us that there are 7 basic enemies that haunt most keepsake preservation efforts. Here they are, beginning with the most harmful: Read the rest of this entry »
I use any excuse in the book to eat garlic, especially garlic mashed potatoes. So be it if I reek after eating a fine bowl of garlic mashed potatoes.
Some Things to Know About Garlic
- One finely minced raw garlic clove releases more flavor and aroma because more surfaces are exposed Read the rest of this entry »
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When adding biographies and family stories to my family cookbook, I always follow the basic principle of KISS (keep it short & simple). To do this, I try to focus on one topic at a time when telling a tale, and avoid everything my subject discusses that is off the topic. This can be hard to do, especially when the subject rambles or hopskotches through years of a life well-lived. Read the rest of this entry »
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I was looking for some inspired funeral food the other day to take to a grieving family, and was struck by the lack of local information on the subject. I realized that churches could provide a great service for their congregations and the community if they could include a section in their church fundraising cookbook that explains the local traditions of funeral food and funeral etiquette. Read the rest of this entry »
Unfortunately, our site had a major hiccup this morning. You should be able to order now. Our store is powered by Volusion, one of the major shopping cart systems out there. Customers all over the planet experienced similar problems. We’re up and running now, though!
As the weather becomes cooler and leaves begin to turn amber and red, it is time to pull out a favorite family recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies that my family has been making for many decades.
These pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are plump, cakelike cookies that have a moist and delicious pumpkin flavor accented by chocolate pieces throughout. I don’t know why, but they have a haunting flavor that draws me to them around Halloween time. The ghosts of ancestors past perhaps, who baked these cookies in the embers of burned witches … (just kidding!). Read the rest of this entry »
My friend, Ruth, and I used to be so confused about how to cook in a convection oven. After all, we both grew up in areas where wood-burning stoves were common, so having an oven that blows hot air around was quite a breakthrough in cooking for us.
We now understand the technology of convection ovens: A little built-in fan circulates hot air around inside the oven, which cooks foods quicker and more evenly than a non-convection (or regular) oven. Read the rest of this entry »
“How much time does it take to make a family cookbook?” This is a question our customers often ask when buying our Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software.
The answer is as simple or as complex as our customers want to hear (we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, you know.) How much time it takes to make a family cookbook is dependent upon 5 important areas of discussion, which we ask right back: Read the rest of this entry »
I stumbled across a fascinating food pairing website the other day that I just have to share. It is a great resource for anyone who likes to cook, from professional chefs to food contest competitors and home cooks, on down to youngsters who are just beginning to explore the pleasures of culinary combinations.
The food pairing website was developed by a group of Belgian scientists who want to inspire new food recipes and groupings, and also to provide suggestions on what might be good substitutes for a particular ingredient when it is not available (or if one has allergies).
To test the food pairing website, I entered “pumpkin” in the search window, and read with some curiosity and amazement the result (noted below), which is based on scientific flavor and taste combinations that might be compatible:
Pumpkin can be combined with -
- Dairy: Butter, Cheddar and Gruyere
- Meat: Chicken cooked, San Daniele ham and Chicken roasted
- Chocolate, coffee, tea: Dominican Republic white chocolate, Tea black and Vanuatu milk chocolate
The search result on the food pairing website also comes with a visual “flavor array” that shows the relationship between the main ingredient and other ingredients that are compatible based on their flavor profile. Some of the compatible food suggestions are quite unusual, and your imagination can certainly be creative.
Check out the food pairing website: http://www.foodpairing.be/
Hmm, how about steam-grilled pumpkin slices over honey-drizzled basmatic rice garnished with grated Vanuatu milk chocolate? I’ll have to think about that before I add it to my family cookbook.
Happy cookbooking,
Matilda
Somewhere in my notes I had stashed away a scrap of paper scrawled with the words: October – Family History Month. The note was meant to remind me to suggest how great it would be to have a Family Cookbook Month instead.
Family Cookbook Month could be even bigger than Family History Month. Along with tracing one’s ancestry through the popular genealogy websites, families could get together to discuss favorite family recipes and preserve them in a family cookbook.
Families could use a cookbook software (mine immediately comes to mind) that already allows users the ability to include a family tree, complete with photos and biographies. Read the rest of this entry »
Is there a section in your family cookbook devoted to the age-old fundraiser known as a bake sale? If not, you might want to add these 5 tips for bake sale success into a new section devoted to such events, along with recipes for your favorite easy-to-make bake sale goodies.
With schools and churches having bake sales for fundraising, now is also a good time to review what makes a successful bake sale. Following are my 5 tips for bake sale success: Read the rest of this entry »
A loud pounding sound radiating from the kitchen captured my attention and curiosity. Upon arrival, I caught my husband using my best French chef’s knife to jab frozen mango Tang out of my favorite clear plastic Kool Aid-style pitcher. I wasn’t too happy about the potentials of his act: breaking the knife; breaking the pitcher, cutting himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Once I had a potluck dinner party and no one brought anything. I was puzzled, in that I had specified the type of event in my invitation, both written and verbal. Guests said they didn’t know what to bring, and they knew from previous events that I would have enough food for an army anyway.
Guess what? That was the first time I had decided to stay on budget, not go overboard with last minute changes of mind and menu, and made just what the recommended per person serving amounts were. I made a very large pan of Lawry’s famous Sour Cream Tortilla Casserole as a side to barbecued steak and chicken. I was horrified (mortified) when one guest asked if I had another pan made in the oven, since she didn’t get any! (Everyone apparently assured her that I had more.) Read the rest of this entry »
During this week prior to Yom Kippur (High Holy Days), I am reminded of the many Jewish congregations that have put together sisterhood fundraising cookbooks for their charitable causes.
One sisterhood fundraising cookbook I ran across years ago included a light-hearted look at Jewish life and culture, with many funny stories from members of the temple sisterhood interwoven between the recipes. It was called “Chicken Soup,” (not to be confused with the best-selling Chicken Soup series), and most of the recipes fit into the following categories: Read the rest of this entry »
Every year after school starts a lot of groups look for fundraising projects for various schools, houses of worship, and community organizations. Let’s face it, fundraising for these groups is a never ending cycle, and it is particularly challenging in these economic times.
One thing I’ve learned over the years about fundraising is that people will donate generously if they perceive “value.” That concept can be further summed up as “getting something in return for my donation.” Read the rest of this entry »
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In the childhood memories of every good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot and a mom.
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