Category Archives: Cooking Tips

Two New Covers Added to Family Cookbook Design Center

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At Family Cookbook Project, we are always trying to improve our offerings to our members. We are please to announce two new pre-designed cookbook covers that you can choose when designing your own personal cookbook.

HeartsOnStickstxtHearts on a Stick – Hearts on a stick is a great cover for any food lover. It can also be the perfect cookbook cover for a wedding cookbook or a bridal shower cookbook.

 

 

greatfood1txtCarrot and Apple – Carrot and Apple is a simple but fun illustration that is perfect for a kids cookbook cover. It can also be effective for a school fundraising cookbook cover.

 

 

These two new covers join over 50 professionally designed cookbook covers for you to choose from when you create your personal cookbook with FamilyCookbookProject.com.

Scouting Cookbook Covers Added to FamilyCookbookProject.com

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A great scouting fundraising idea is to create a Scouting Fundraiser Cookbook. While the Girl Scouts have their cookies to sell, most troops rely on other means to raise the funds for trip trips, Eagle projects, summer camp and upgrading camping gear.

The Family Cookbook Project knows how important a fun and easy fundraising project is for a troop to raise the funds to support the outstanding job at helping to develop our countries next generation of leaders. That’s why we help been helping troops raise money with Scouting Fundraising Cookbooks for years. Not only can it be profitable, but it is a fun project the scouting families can enjoy as well.

To help support the scouting community and make creating a Scouting Fundraiser Cookbook even easier, The Family Cookbook Project has introduced four new scouting-themed covers that can be used on a troop cookbook.

Scout Fundraising Cookbook Cover Scout Fundraser Cookbook Cover Scout Coobook Project Camping Cookbook Cover

 

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Recipe Standard Measurements

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 measuring_cup

For many generations, recipes were handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter. Recipes consisted of a little of this and a smidgin of that. The food always came our great – or at least that is what we told out mothers! Today things are different. Computers make is easy to write down our recipes and share them with friends and family members over the Internet. However it is important to remember that cooking has a language of its own. It is a language of ingredients and measurements and directions. I believe the most important of these is measurements. If we did not have standard measurements for cooking, “T” could be a teaspoon, a tablespoons, a thimble full or a truck load! Here are a list of Standard Measures Abbreviations commonly used in recipes.

teaspoon……………………… tsp.
tablespoon…………………… tbsp. or T.
cup…………………………….. c.
quart…………………………… qt.
ounce…………………………. oz.
pint…………………………….. pt.
gallon…………………………. gal.
inch…………………………….. in.
pound………………………….. lb.
milliliter…………………………. ml
liter……………………………….. L
milligram……………………….. mg
gram……………………………… g
kilogram ……………………….. kg
millimeter……………………… mm
centimeter…………………….. cm
meter……………………………. m
Celsius…………………………… C
Fahrenheit……………………. F

Another important thing about standard measurements is that they don’t work if you don’t use them! Including an ingredient in your recipe without a specific amount is likely to leave someone trying the recipe for the first time scratching their head and wondering what to do. Remember know one will know unless you include it in your recipe.

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

A Mother’s Gift

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We owe our mothers so much. They give us life, they nurture us, feed us and teach us.

Our mothers are also often our first teachers in the kitchen. From them we learn table manners, what a family meal is and how it brings us all together. Our lessons start when we watch and mimic what we see in the kitchen and at the dinner table. As we grow and understand, we are taught by being allowed to become a “mother’s helper” and do some of the simpler tasks of getting the family meal prepared. Later in life, we use all of the years of learning by contributing our favorite family dishes when the family gathers at holidays, taking some of the pressure off of our mothers.
As a mom, it is important to pass those life skills on to our children so they have the same foundation in the kitchen that we learned from our parents.
Here are some simple ideas to consider when teaching the next generation how to prepare the family meal:
Teach measurements– Find tasks for young ones that allow them to stay in one location, but keep them busy. Give them a measuring spoon and ask them to count how many teaspoons are in a cup of flour or water. Once they fill the cup, use it in your recipe.
Name the tools – Many of the tools of the trade in the kitchen have specific names and specific uses. Teach the names of the tool as well as their purpose in preparing the meal. That way when you ask for a wisk you don’t get a potato masher!
Plan meals together– For most families, dinner usually includes a main dish or entre, a side dish or two providing a starch and vegetable, and if we are lucky a dessert. Discuss why certain side dishes go together and how to plan a well-balanced meal.
Use recipes – Many mothers have made their favorite family recipes so many times, that they don’t even use a recipe any more or they never had one from their mother. Trial and error can come later, to start have a set of family recipes that can be used to provide step by step instructions to a young chef. If you don’t have them, write them down as you make a dish and start collecting them.
A great way to help mom collect and share her family recipes is to help her create a family cookbook. The Family Cookbook Project (www.FamilyCookbookProject.com) offers a gift certificate that can printed out and included in a Mother’s Day card. This gift will help any mom create an easy online family cookbook that can then be printed and shared for generations to come.
Mom’s can also give themselves a gift to help preserve their family food traditions. By creating a family cookbook and collecting your family recipes, you will be creating a helpful guide for future generations.

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

Tips to Keep Your Cookbook Contributors Motivated

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As with any family project, getting everyone to contribute can be a challenge, especially if they have not seen the end product beforehand.

Here are some tips to keep your contributors motivated:

The more the merrier – Be sure to include everyone, not just the great cooks. Everyone likes to be asked to participate and the more you invite, the more recipes you’ll likely get. To add contributors and send an email invitation, > Use the Invitation Tool

Set a reasonable deadline – Set the submission deadline on the “Project Information Editor” page, but don’t set it too far in the future. We all tend to put off whatever we can and contributing recipes is often one of those things. A month is usually enough time to give everyone to find the recipes they want to contribute and get them entered. Two things to remember: most of the recipes will come in just in time for the deadline and second, you can always extend the deadline if you want more recipes.
Send regular updates – Use the Reminder Tool to email some or all of your contributors on a regular basis. Remind them of the deadline and ask them to meet a specific goal, like “please add one or two recipes to each category”.
Target the biggest recipe boxes – Every family has a handful of people who are known for their cooking (you are most likely one of them in your family!). Send a personal message to them either using the remainder tool or reaching out by telephone, Facebook or with a personal visit. People are flattered when their skills are recognized. Let them know the cookbook would not be complete without their contributions.
Ask for specific recipes – Send a reminder to everyone asking for a specific recipe from your family’s past that will get everyone thinking of past gatherings. Include your memories of that dish or the person who created it. It might help remind everyone why putting together a family cookbook is important.
Use social media – As you add your own recipes to your family cookbook, it is easy to post them to Facebook or pin them to Pinterest. Sharing your recipes this way shows other family members that you are contributing and shows them they should as well.
Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

Standard Measurements for Your Personal Cookbook

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For many generations, recipes were handed down by word of mouth from mother to daughter. Recipes consisted of a little of this and a smidgin of that. The food always came our great - or at least that is what we told out mothers!

Today things are different. Computers make is easy to write down our recipes and share them with friends and family members over the Internet. However it is important to remember that cooking has a language of its own. It is a language of ingredients and measurements and directions.

I believe the most important of these is measurements. If we did not have standard measurements for cooking, "T" could be a teaspoon, a tablespoons, a thimble full or a truck load!

Here are a list of Standard Measures Abbreviations commonly used in recipes.


teaspoon........................... tsp.
tablespoon........................ tbsp. or T.
cup................................... c.
quart................................. qt.
ounce............................... oz.
pint................................... pt.
gallon............................... gal.
inch................................... in.
pound................................ lb.
milliliter............................... ml
liter...................................... L
milligram............................. mg
gram.................................... g
kilogram .............................  kg
millimeter...........................  mm
centimeter..........................  cm
meter..................................  m
Celsius................................. C
Fahrenheit......................... F
 
 
Another important thing about standard measurements is that they don't work if you don't use them! Including an ingredient in your recipe without a specific amount is likely to leave someone trying the recipe for the first time scratching their head and wondering what to do. Remember know one will know unless you include it in your recipe.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

 
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Removing Blank Pages From Your Family Cookbook

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One of the questions we get a lot as Cookbook Publishers is "how do I remove the blank pages in my cookbook?"  

It seems that when people preview their family cookbook on FamilyCookbookProject.com, they see the cover, then a blank page, then the title page, then another blank page, and so on. They want those blank pages eliminated to lower the cost of printing.

In publishing, especially cookbook publishing, a cookbook needs to be laid out in a specific way in order for the most important pages to be on the right side when the book is opened. Think about it, Whenever you open a book, the title page is the first thing you see and it is always on the right page of a two page spread. Same goes for the Introduction, Table of Contents and the section dividers.

On FamilyCookbookProject.com, if you create a preview cookbook PDF, you want to open it in your Adobe Reader program and select the option to view  "Facing Pages" or "Double-up" (look under the View menu), you'll see how the pages back up to each other. 

Now with that said, there is no reason why those pages have to be blank. The inside front cover can have a family photo photo or bio of the cookbook editor. The same goes for other blank pages as well. If your introduction is one page and after it is a blank page, consider writing more, adding a photo or even making the text larger to fill up that extra space.

One benefit form using FamilyCookbookProject.com is that we provide a complete set of handy kitchen information that can be used on the back of the recipe category dividers with the touch of a button.
 
 
 
 

Bill Rice takes more than 20,000 photos a year and is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest! 

 
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How to find a Recipe Contest.

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Earlier this week, we posted and article on How to Make Money with Cookbook Contests.

We’ve got a lot of questions on how to find the best recipe contests to enter. The answer is like almost everything else these days – the Internet.

Here is a list of some websites and newsletters you might want to consider if you are interested in finding fun recipe contests on an ongoing basis.

Contest Cook – One of my favorite sites for recipe contest data. This site provides a easy to read list on the top of the page and the basic info of each contest below.

FuseLabs Recipe Contest – This site brings together newspaper articles from multiple sources all related to cookbook contests.

Cooking Contest Central – This is most likely the most extensive collection of recipe contests out here. A subscription is $25 a year, but if you’re serious about winning cooking contests, this is a great place to start.

Pillsbury Bake-off – For 47 years Pillsbury has been the mother of all recipe contests. Grand Prize is $1,000,000.

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

Recipe-Contests1

How to Make Money with Your Recipes

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Are you really creative when it comes to creating interesting new food combinations? Would you like to make some money cooking, not to mention earning some fame and recognition for your abilities in the kitchen?

Then maybe entering recipes contests might be for you!

Each year hundreds of companies host competitions for creating recipes using their products. It’s a great way to raise awareness of a particular food, like the 3rd International Albacore Tuna Recipe Competition (Tuna recipes), or a cooking style, like the Taste of Home 13×9 Recipe Contest (anything in a 13×9 pan).

Here are some tips on how you can become an “Award-winning” recipe creator:

Know the deadline: Most recipe competitions have a specific deadline that you have to submit before. Miss it and your recipe won’t even be considered.

Make sure you’re eligible: Some cooking contests are only for individuals of a specific state, age group or subscribers of the sponsoring magazine. Know who can win before you spend the time creating.

Don’t submit something you found on the Internet: If it is not yours, don’t enter it. If you started with a standard recipe and changed it, you should be ok.

Include a photo: Food always looks better in a photo than on a list of ingredients and directions. Show your food off for the recipe judges and you’ll increase your chances to win.

Know what the prize is:  A recipe contest with a $5,000 first prize will have a lot more competition than one with a $500 prize or a Kindle for the winner. All are fun to win, but expect the bigger the prize, the more work you will have to put in to have a winning recipe entry.

Have fun: At the end of the day, you want to have fun making new recipes and entering recipe contests. Remember,I don’t know anyone who makes a living at winning recipe competitions.

Save your recipes: You might only select one of two recipes to submit to a particular recipe competition, but you might stumble across several recipes that your family and friends may love. Use FamilyCookbookProject.com to store your recipes and pull them up later when it’s time to feed your family something new!

Bill Rice is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

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Valentine’s Day is for Lovers

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While the end of year holidays are a great time to give out your cookbooks, there are lots of fun events coming up that make for perfect gift giving.   Whether you’re creating a cookbook with our cookbook and recipe organizing software at FamilyCookbookProject.com or a fund raising project at CookbookFundraiser.com we make it easy and fun!

Valentine’s Day is in a couple weeks. How about giving your family some food love! You’ll need to order in the next day or two to ensure delivery.

Mother’s Day is coming quickly – May 12th – and it also is one of the best times to have your family cookbook published. Family cookbooks make a great Mother’s Day gift both for the mothers in our lives and even from a mother to her children.

Wedding season is coming, too! How about a family & friends cookbook for a shower or bridal party gift?




Featured recipe from the database

The Great Family Cookbook Project has a huge amount of public recipes in the system thanks to you! If you need a fun recipe idea that’s not in your own cookbook, go to our home page and use the search function to see what’s available – lots of good eats!

Here is a recipe we tried recently:

Valentine Truffles

This recipe for Valentine Truffles, by Susan Aitken, is from The Aitken Family Cookbook Project. Search for more great recipes here from over 500,000 in our family cookbooks!


Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb semisweet chocolate
3 lbs unsalted butter
1 1/2 c. heavy ream
3 tbsp. coffee liquor or vanilla
dark chocolate and/ or rolling powders as needed


Directions:

Cut the semisweet chocolate and butter into the smallest pieces you can manage. Place them in a large stainless-steel bowl. In a small saucepan, bring cream to boil, stirring to avoid burning. Remove from heat and pour over chocolate and butter. Stir until they melt. If they do not quite melt, place 1 inch of water in a frying pan, bring to a boil turn burner off, and place the chocolate bowl in the pan, being careful not to wet the chocolate. Stir until melted. When chocolate is melted whisk in the vanilla. Pour chocolate mixture into a shallow pan, and chill until firm enough to shape. Using hands and a spoon or a melon baller; shape chocolate into small balls. This process may get messy and chocolate tends to melt. Sprinkle hands with cocoa powder or confectioner’s sugar to minimize mess. when balls are shaped, roll some in cocoa powder or in a sifted mixture of instant coffee and confectioner’s sugar and set aside. Pace remaining balls on a butter surface in the freezer to firm for dipping. When balls have firmed, prepare dark chocolate by melting a small amount in the microwave or a double boiler. Dip each ball in chocolate. To be extra festive, melt a bit of white chocolate as well and decorate the tops of the coated truffles.


Number Of Servings:

60 truffles


Chip Lowell is Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect and share food memories. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!