How do you make your own family recipe book without any family members knowing about it?  Here are a few ideas that can help you make your secret family cookbook a reality (and end up being much easier than you may think): Read the rest of this entry »

Halloween donut spiders

This time of year, thoughts are turning toward what amusing ghoulies, ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties will show up on our doorsteps on Halloween night.  Yes, it is almost time for trick-or-treaters to make their way to our front doors!

My favorite Halloween payout to these little extortionists is usually a non-frozen ice pop or two. I like ice pops because they are extremely inexpensive (a box of 100 for under $5); parents like ice pops because they are safe (if punctured by mean spirits, they leak); and the kids love ‘em because, well, they are kids and think I give them ice cream! Read the rest of this entry »

Creating a fundraiser cookbook for a local charity, church, school, or community organization has long been a respected way for groups to earn money to finance many worthwhile projects.

I have at least 45 fundraiser cookbooks from all over the country on my bookshelf. Some of them are my favorites, and I use them constantly for potluck dish ideas and volume cooking. (Yes, eventually I will pick out the recipes I like and add them to my own recipe collection in my own family cookbook. But for now, let’s focus on your fundraising goals.) Read the rest of this entry »

Thought I’d jump (way belatedly) on the Rick Roll bandwagon:

In case you aren’t sure what this all means, click here.

I didn’t come up with this one–just got it in an email.

Last Saturday evening I had the pleasure of spending several hours with dear friends at a very (very) nice fancy food restaurant that specializes in wild game.  It had been awhile since I’d visited the fancy food “lodge,” with its stone fireplace ablaze, rustic beamed ceiling and bits of outdoorsy memorabilia (such as old firearms and fishing gear) adorning various dining areas. Let’s not forget the beady eyes of several animals staring down accusingly from their bodiless perches on the rough-timbered walls. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems we migrated into Fall without hardly noticing.

Maybe we’ve been a bit distracted from watching our own personal worth drop with every foot of the ticker tape…or watching our nation’s delicate financial markets holding the world’s economy at bay….or watching Presidential debates and waiting for the candidates to give us a real, detailed “change management” agenda….

Nevertheless, Fall is here and some glorious autumn colors are bound to show their reds and golds very soon, perhaps in your part of the world.  Aside from everyone’s woes and jitters, people still gotta eat, and easy is the name of the game for some of our favorite fall one dish dinners with an international flavor. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time there was a good recipe software, and there was a bad recipe software.

The good recipe software was easy to use, had plenty of options, and left anyone entering data happy and fulfilled. The result of using the good recipe software was a quickly-made wonderful family cookbook filled with beloved recipes, family stories and photographs that illustrated the family recipes and family members, and a family keepsake worthy of future generations. Read the rest of this entry »

Want a simple chart to document when your mustard or mayo has gone bad? We’ve got a handy little condiment freshness chart.(We found it here, but it wasn’t very printer friendly so I cleaned it up.) Could look nice in your family cookbook.

It’s just a nifty way to know the skinny on when your condiment has turned on you.

If you liked that, you might want to check out our kitchen conversion chart or our printable grocery checklist.

A fascinating item in The Recipe Writer’s Handbook inspired this writing about the evolution of cookbooks and cookbook authors. As can be guessed, most of the few early cookbooks were written by men (from the late 4th to 14th centuries).

Around 1390, for example, a chef of King Richard II is credited with writing the first English cookbook (cookery book) called Forme of Cury. This book was actually a vellum scroll of recipes that included how to use exotic spices in everyday cooking. (The word cury is the Middle English word for cookery, and not a spice blend, I’m told.)

As literacy grew in the upper classes, women starting writing cookbooks and other running-the-household instructional books. These served to record the rich variety of food, tastes, cooking methods, eating habits, and even the local dialects. Some of the notable women cookbook authors through modern times have included:

Hannah Wolley (c. 1622-1674)
In 1661, she became the first female author to try and make money from writing and publishing a cookbook with her The Queen-Like Closet, or Rich Cabinet, which included easy-to-follow recipes. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps you are the family member other family members contact when they have a question about Aunt Betty’s apple crisp or Uncle Johnny’s barbecue sauce.  You are the one with custom recipe cards and have vowed to make your own family cookbook with the beloved family recipes.

Does that make you the family food historian? Well, perhaps.

Review our 10 point family food historian character profile and see if you fall into the family food historian category: Read the rest of this entry »

There are as many reasons to make a cookbook as there are people. The 10 reasons to make a cookbook listed below are some of the top ones our readers and cookbook software users have told us:

1. Everybody loves my food.
Friends tell me I’m a great cook and that they would like to have my recipes. If I type it up once, I can print it a hundred times!

2. I need to get organized.
I’m tired of looking through 10 cookbooks, 5 drawers, a recipe card box, and under the refrigerator for all my recipes. Read the rest of this entry »

You can Google and find a lot of free recipes for just about everything. But if you search for, say, “cookie recipe” you may wind up getting results that include computer cookies.

So I decided to build the Free Recipe Search Engine, a handy one-stop shopping place that searches through over 100 recipe and cooking websites and gives you exactly the recipes you want.

I’m storing the Free Recipe Search Engine here. If you like it or have other free recipe sites you’d like me to add, please let me know!

I like to use the brand names for ingredients in my cookbook recipes. Not because they are necessarily any better than the generic brands, but because they often produce a better recipe result, and therefore, make family recipes more consistent.  Twenty years from now, if someone makes one of the recipes from your family cookbook, will they really get the same taste from a “cherry flavored gelatin” as they do from cherry Jell-O?

For example, if I want to make Tres Leches Cake, I will always use a certain brand name product (Eagle Brand) because I like the taste better. Believe me, I have experimented with assorted sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and whipped cream for the Tres Leches Cake ingredients, and there is a certain combination that is unbeatable together (and guess what, they all are the brand name products). Read the rest of this entry »

Last February I got a nice handwritten letter from a friend’s grandson who was studying the history and geography of major cities in the United States. He asked most politely if I would send him a postcard from my town so he could pin it up on the classroom bulletin board with postcards other students were getting from around the country.

This was such a brilliant class project that I couldn’t help but admire the teacher for coaching the students so well, and also for providing a wonderful activity and lesson that will be remembered long after the school year ends. Read the rest of this entry »