The Family Cookbook Project

Category: General Cookbook

  • Cookbook Fundraisers For Scout Troops

    Cookbook Fundraisers For Scout Troops

    It’s a fact of life. When you are part of Scouting, fundraising events helped the troop to provide the valuable activities and services that the scouts need to participate.

    It is also a fact of life that doing the same old fundraisers year in and year out can put a damper on the enthusiasm of the scouts in your troop to participate-and their family and friends to support the efforts.

    As an assistant scoutmaster for BSA Scout Troop 175 in Simsbury Connecticut, we have used Family Cookbook Project.com to host a successful fundraiser cookbook that everyone involved enjoyed.

    One of our scouts, Jon, was looking for an innovative funding mechanism for his Eagle Scout project. He created an account on FamilyCookbookProject.com, invited the other scouts in the troop to contribute recipes and then sold the finished product to families in the troop and in the community. He raise thousands of dollars that he was able to use to build a wooden walkway through a wetlands area of a local state park.

    The scouts all had a great time coming up with interesting recipes and seeing their name in print. The troop had a physical reminder of the project and new patrol leaders all have access to copies to help them with their trip menu planning and cooking merit badge.

    John used a photo of his trip to Philmont on the cover of his cookbook however Family Cookbook Project offers several scouting related covers for troops to use.

    If your troop would like to start a cookbook fundraiser, check out How to create a successful cookbook fundraiser.

    Bill Rice is publisher of the Family Cookbook Project. He is also a father of an Eagle Scout and is a long-time Assistant Scoutmaster with BSA Troop 175 in Simsbury Connecticut.

  • 1911 Cookbook Might Be One Of The First Family Cookbooks

    1911 Cookbook Might Be One Of The First Family Cookbooks

    Family Cookbooks have been around for  long time. Sometimes they are the work of an individual compiling their recipes, other times they are the join effort of a community.

    Recently, a cookbook called ‘250 Tried Recipes for Everyday Use’ features numerous recipes supplied by housewives around the UK back in 1911, and was discovered in a kitchen of a property that had been left unused since the 1950s in the United Kingdom.

    The fascinating publication provides an insight into the basic ingredients and cooking methods used at the time and all instructions are boiled down to one paragraph.

    It also includes a cheeky recipe on how best to ‘cook a husband’ as too many ‘are utterly spoiled by mismanagement’. Comical descriptions include ‘keeping them in hot water’, ‘roasting them’ or keeping them ‘in a stew with irritating ways and words.’ The housewife also suggests ‘add a little sugar in the form of what confectioners call kisses’ and that ‘a little spice improves them’.

    Read an article on the cookbook that appeared on the UK’s Daily Mail’s website, including additional recipes and pages from the historic cookbook.

     

     

     

  • A New Take On Recipe Categories

    A New Take On Recipe Categories

    Recipe categories help us organize our recipes in an easy to browse format within your family cookbook.

    By default, we offer eight standard recipe categories that are perfect for the majority of cookbook editors.

    List default recipe categories

    We also give you the ability to create your own categories and add them to the existing categories or to create subcategories which helps to refine the Recipes even further.

    But do you have to organize by food type? Absolutely not!

    We have seen our editors organize their recipes by many different formats other than food types.

    People – One popular way is to organize by person. When recipes are tribute to great past cooks in the family, you can have each category named for a specific person or even family. You then can use subcategories to further organize the recipes.

    Meal – Another way people organize recipes is by meal. When organizing buy breakfast, lunch, dinner you often will get editors who use multi part recipes to list the entrées and the side dishes that go with it.

    Holidays – Another popular way is to have categories for each holiday. We all have certain recipes that tend to come out only at specific holidays. By putting together a cookbook that lists all of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, family reunion, Valentine’s Day and other holiday recipes in one place, you know exactly where to go to prepare for that holiday.

    Season – another way to organize your recipe is by seasons. Some recipes are too heavy to be eaten during the summer and others have fresh ingredients that are not available in the winter.

    No matter how you organize your cookbook, family cookbook project makes it easy. We also offer the ability to create multiple cookbooks and transfer existing recipes into new cookbooks to help you make your cookbook publishing experience outstanding.

     

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Our Food Genealogy

    Our Food Genealogy

     

    Family is very important to me. I have been actively working on my family tree and connecting with lost relatives for almost 3 decades. Genealogy is a fascinating past time and has and has only gotten easier using the power of the Internet to track down historic records without even leaving your home.

    However, genealogy is more than just finding peoples names and the dates they were born and died. It’s about learning a little about their lives, what they did for a living and helping their memories come alive.

    The power of the Internet has also made it easy to save your cherished recipes for future generations. The food we grew up with is always very special to us and if no one remembers how to make something, the recipe dies.

    My mother had her mother’s old recipe box and in it was a recipe for shortbread that was from my Great-Grandmother May Ann McDougall Peatie who was born in Scotland in 1883. This recipe was lost to our family for many years but is now part of my family cookbook so everyone can enjoy these traditional Scottish shortbread cookies.

    Family Cookbook Project was created specifically to help preserve these family treasures. It helps families collaborate together and gather recipes from many sources and put them in a single printed cookbook.

    Preserving recipes and memories for future generations – that’s our mission.

    Creating a family cookbook is easy with Family Cookbook Project. If you have not done so already, get started today with your own personalized cookbook at www.FamilyCookbookProject.com.

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • 600 BBQ Recipes

    600 BBQ Recipes

    So we thought, wouldn’t be cool to pick a category and show all  the recipes titles with links to the recipes.

    so we did. The first one was Pies.

    Here are 600 BBQ recipes for you to enjoy.

    I bet there will be a lot of grilling and smoking this weekend! I know I will!

     

    Bill Rice loves to grill and smoke meat and seafood and is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

     

  • Preserving Cherished Food Memories with a Family Cookbook

    Preserving Cherished Food Memories with a Family Cookbook

    Back when I was in my youth, I loved my Gram Helen’s cooking. She made thing that my mother did not. However, when she passed in 1993, most of her recipes went with her. I can still remember her meatloaf with a can of Cream of Mushroom soup on it, but for the life of me it never comes out the way I remember when she made it.

    So a decade later, my family and I were sitting around a table and decided to create a family cookbooks so all of the recipes we loved would be available to every member of the family today and more importantly, preserved for future generations. Since my family was all over the country, I had my high school friend help me create a website that became the great Family Cookbook Project.

    FamilyCookbookProject.com makes it easy to create a printed personal cookbook filled with your own recipes. Our program has helped thousands of individuals organize recipes, provide professionally designed covers and recipe layouts and automatically creates a table of contents and index of recipes for beautiful printed cookbooks. We make it easy and fun to create your own cookbook.

    My mom with our family cookbook she created.

    Family Cookbooks help preserve family memories and food traditions for future generations. There is nothing like seeing a handwritten recipe from a family member that you remember or even never met, but who’s recipe is still used today.

    Here are some tips from Family Cookbook Project:

    • Often collection of recipes in the form of a recipe box, magazine and newspaper clippings, or cookbooks with pages marked is a great place to start creating your cookbook.
    • For those recipes that you never wrote down because you made them so many times you knew it by memory, make it again and this time write it down step by step as you make it.
    • Measure the ingredients! Even if you use a “handful” of something, take a handful and put it into a measuring cup and write it down before throwing it into the pot.
    • Remember to write personal notes about why this recipe was important, who gave it to you or any special memories of meals that it was served. My mothers Chicken Supreme will always remind me of her serving at the rehearsal dinner for my wedding.
    • Including lots of photos is also a great way to make your special cookbook and help preserve the special memories.

    Remember, behind every recipe you love is a story you want to share.

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Editor Account verses Contributor Account

    Editor Account verses Contributor Account

    If you invite contributors to submit recipes, you can see their accounts on the Communion Center. You can edit their information by clicking on their name, see when they last logged in, how many recipes they have added and even log in to their account.

    A contributor sees the “Full homepage” when they log in. They see a welcome message and photo, a table of contents of recipes, a list of contributors, and a list of newest recipes.

    Contributors do not see any of the design, communication or publishing tools because only the editor can do those functions.  All a contributor can do is submit recipes and edit those recipes they have submitted.

    As the editor of the cookbook, only  you can:

    • Invite any contributors
    • Communication with contributions as a group or individually
    • Control all design aspects of the cookbook including cover, dividers, and recipe layouts
    • Write the introduction and any custom pages
    • Edit all of the recipes, not just your own
    • Order printed copies of your cookbook

    One thing you can do as editor to make your contributor’s accounts more welcoming is to upload a fun family photo and a welcome message for the page. In the Account Center, you will find a link to Add/Edit Website Intro and Photo.

    Sometimes editors would like a contributor to have access to all of the editor tools and serve as a second editor. However, we have designed Family Cookbook Project to have a single editor. As editor you can give your username and password to a trusted contributor and allow them access to your account, if you wish.

    The easiest way to see exactly what your contributors see when they log in is to log into there account from the list of contributors. This way you can make sure everything is exactly how you want it.

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

     

  • Co-Editors Now Available on Family Cookbook Project

    Co-Editors Now Available on Family Cookbook Project

    Face it, sometimes we all need a little help.

    As a cookbook editor, you always had the ability to invite other family members to contribute recipes, so you did not need to personally enter all those recipes into the system (this is also a great family project). However, contributors could only edit their own recipes and nothing else.

    Until now.

    In the editor’s Communication Center, any contributor can now be upgraded to a co-admin for the cookbook. This gives them the ability to edit all of the recipes within the cookbook, not just their own. This can be a huge time saver when getting a cookbook ready to print. Having co-editors make the first edits to a recipe will allow the editor to focus on the design elements of the cookbook and the overall project.

    It is also important to note that the primary editor still has ultimate responsibility for the design and content of the cookbook so while family members can help, ultimately it is the editor that needs to sign-off that the cookbook is correct and ready for printing.

    One thing to remember, “Too many cooks spoil the soup.”  So be very careful when promoting someone to co-editor.  They can adjust settings and recipes just like the main Editor.  So keep communicating!  And once the editing work is done, you can easily change a co-editor back to normal contributor.

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • How Many Recipes Should My Cookbook Have?

    How Many Recipes Should My Cookbook Have?

    One question every cookbook editor wants to know is how many recipes should my cookbook have? Too many and printing costs are higher, not enough and the cookbook is not as valuable. What’s a family cookbook editor to do?

    Looking at the thousands of cookbooks we have printed over the past decade, there is no real number of recipes that make up a good cookbook – you have what you have. We have printed cookbooks with just 15 great recipes and as many as 1200! However, that 1200 recipe book was 750 pages – HUGE!

    The average size seems to be around 150 recipes and that is why we use that number in our cost calculator.

    When a great cookbook has less recipes, often the editor includes other content to augment the food offerings. Photos of each dish, a section of family photos, a family tree or family stories about people remembered can really add value to a smaller cookbook.

    Larger cookbooks can be impressive simply by the number of recipes it contains. However, since printing cost is directly related to the number of pages that need to be printed, it is important to be mindful of your design choices when choosing your layout options.

    At the end of the day, your cookbook is exactly that – your cookbook. You need to balance the number and quality of the recipes included with the needs of your family.

     

    Bill Rice is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

     

  • 600 Pie Recipes

    600 Pie Recipes

    As you know, we have a lot of recipes entered into FamilyCookbookProject.com each day. We host over 2,000,000 family tested recipes that are not marked private and are available for everyone to enjoy.

    So we thought, wouldn’t be cool to pick a category and show all  the recipes titles with links to the recipes.

    so we did.

    Here are 600 Pie recipes for you to enjoy.

    I bet there will be a lot of baking going on this weekend!

     

    Bill Rice loves apple and pumpkin pie and is founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!