Category: Editor Tips

If you have a pile of recipes that you need to enter into familycookbookproject.com but are not looking forward to having to spend your days typing, there is an easier way. You can dictate your recipes using speech to text software built into your phone or computer. Your recipes are turned into text that can be edited and then cut and pasted into the Add a Recipe form in your editor account.

There are several very easy ways to dictate recipes.

Mobile phones – If you use an iPhone, simply open up your notes application and create a new note. Next, look at the bottom right corner of your pop-up keyboard. You’ll see a little microphone. Click on this and you can start talking and the software in the phone will change your words into written text.

You might have to do some editing because it does not always get it right, but it still can be a great timesaver.

Microsoft Word – while typing is certainly the most common way to create documents, you’re not limited to using the keyboard. Word will let you dictate your writing using voice recognition. This works on both a Mac and a PC.

Make sure your computer has a microphone attached. This can be built-in like on a laptop or a separate microphone you plug into the computer. Make sure you are in the home tab of a word document and then look for the microphone icon on the right side of the menu bar that says dictate.

Remember to speak clearly and speak punctuation out loud as you go. For example you can say “new line“ if you want to drop down a line. When you finish a sentence, you just say the word “period”.

Dedicated application – There are also other commercially available apps that you can use to dictate your recipes. However, with the simplicity of your mobile phone or word processing software, I don’t know why you would need it.

Dictating your recipes can be a great timesaver. Once you have the text in a document, then you can simply cut and paste that recipe into the Add A Recipe form and you are good to go.

By the way, this entire article was dictated on my iPhone. Good luck!

Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

A lifetime of feeding our families can generate a wealth of tried and true family recipes. The recipes that everyone loves at holiday gatherings and the everyday meals that we used to feed our kids. All of them are special and need to be written down for future generations.

In years past, our mothers and grandmothers used recipe boxes and index cards to keep track of their recipes if they ever bothered to write them down. Unfortunately if someone wanted a recipe, someone would have to find the recipe card, and hand write a new copy so that recipe can be shared.

Today, computers and the power of the Internet allow us to create online cookbooks that can be printed and easily shared with friends and family members.

A family cookbook allows us to choose which recipes were most important to us and tell the story behind the recipe. Which holidays was it used for, how did you get the recipe, who’s favorite recipe was it?

Recipes are not just a set of instructions, The best recipes tell the story of the food and the family behind it.

Here are some tips for starting your own family cookbook from the Family Cookbook Project.

Get others involved – Everyone in the family has their favorites, so ask them which recipes they would like included. You can even invite them to contribute and enter those recipes directly into the program to save you time and effort.

Set a deadline – Everyone is busy and will wait until the last minute to contribute recipes. That is why setting a deadline at least a month into the future is a good idea. That way people have something to shoot for and give you a reason to contact them to remind them that recipes are due.

Select a cover that stands out – People will judge this cookbook by its cover so make sure it reflects your family’s personality. You can include a photo or pick a design that is meaningful to yourself and the family.

Include photos – Photos make a cookbook come alive. Showing images of family members, past and present, helps put the family in the family cookbook.

Read the recipes – As editor, it is your responsibility to check the recipes for typos and completeness. If a recipe lists an ingredient, make sure it has an amount and is included in the directions as well.

Print extra copies – Ask all of the family members if they want a cookbook before placing your print order (or give them as gifts for the holidays), but be sure to order a few extra copies. Once people see the physical cookbook, it’s amazing how many additional people will want a copy.

A family cookbook is a rewarding project that brings a family together and is a reminder of one of the important elements that help bind us together – memories of family meals, the food that was served and the people who made them.

Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

It’s true, the hardest thing about working with FamilyCookbokProject.com is getting all of our beloved recipes entered into the system so we can create a one of a kind cookbook for family and friends.

You have several options when you want to enter a recipe into your own recipe book.

Here are some of my favorite:

Typing – This is straightforward. You open the Add A Recipe form and use your keyboard to type in the recipe and click on the save button (don’t forget the last part!).

Other People Typing – One of the features that makes FamilyCookbookProject.com unique is that we make it easy to invite others to contribute recipes to your cookbook so you don’t have to do all of the work. Use the invitation tool and have others submit recipes that you can then edit. It’s a great way to build a family cookbook and bring everyone together.

Cut and Paste – If you already have many of your recipes in a text format, like in a Word document, you can cut and paste the recipes into the form. This also works when you find a recipe on a website and you’d like to include it in your cookbook.

Here’s how: Simply highlight all the ingredients in your source document and hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the “C” key on your keyboard. Next go to “add a new recipe” in your family cookbook site. Click in the ingredients box and now hold the Ctrl key while pressing the “v” key. This pastes what you have copied into the field. Repeat for title, directions and notes and you are done!

Import a recipe from a website – We have created a tool to import recipes from some websites. However, it does not always work because every website is different in the way it lays out its recipes.

From your quick start editors menu, click on the Recipe Center button. There you will find a link to “Import Recipes from another website”. This will allow you to take the URL from the recipe page and try to import it into your cookbook. If that does not work, you can cut and paste the ingredients and directions into a new recipe page which is very easy to do.

Dictate recipes – If you don’t like to type, you can also talk your recipes into text form that can be cut and pasted into the Add A Recipe form. To see how to do this, see the recent blog post How to Dictate a Recipe Into Your Family Cookbook Project.

Use a photo – One of the most asked questions we get is “How can I scan a recipe and use it in my cookbook?”

If you have a recipe box or collection of recipes that you would like to scan and use as your recipes in a family cookbook, it can be done. However, a problem with scanned or photographed recipes is that the system can not read the text to create titles and indexes and other parts of the cookbook. The computer just sees them as photos.

So you have two options:

You can include the scanned images as photos attached to recipes that you have typed into the system. This preserved the original form of  the recipe card and makes the recipe highly readable.

Second, you can upload the recipe card image on the Add A Recipe form as the recipe itself and just type the recipe title and contributor name. This saves typing and you get to use the image as the entire recipe. You can add personal notes if you want.

So however you get your recipes entered into FamilyCookbookProject.com, it is the first step to creating what will certainly be a treasured family heirloom to be passed down to future generations.

Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

It’s true, the hardest thing about working with FamilyCookbokProject.com is getting all of our beloved recipes entered into the system so we can create a one of a kind cookbook for family and friends.

You have several options when you want to enter a recipe into your own recipe book.

Here are some of my favorite:

Typing – This is straightforward. You open the Add A Recipe form and use your keyboard to type in the recipe and click on the save button (don’t forget the last part!).

Other People Typing – One of the features that makes FamilyCookbookProject.com unique is that we make it easy to invite others to contribute recipes to your cookbook so you don’t have to do all of the work. Use the invitation tool and have others submit recipes that you can then edit. It’s a great way to build a family cookbook and bring everyone together.

Cut and Paste – If you already have many of your recipes in a text format, like in a Word document, you can cut and paste the recipes into the form. This also works when you find a recipe on a website and you’d like to include it in your cookbook.

Here’s how: Simply highlight all the ingredients in your source document and hold down the Ctrl key while pressing the “C” key on your keyboard. Next go to “add a new recipe” in your family cookbook site. Click in the ingredients box and now hold the Ctrl key while pressing the “v” key. This pastes what you have copied into the field. Repeat for title, directions and notes and you are done!

Import a recipe from a website – We have created a tool to import recipes from some websites. However, it does not always work because every website is different in the way it lays out its recipes.

From your quick start editors menu, click on the Recipe Center button. There you will find a link to “Import Recipes from another website”. This will allow you to take the URL from the recipe page and try to import it into your cookbook. If that does not work, you can cut and paste the ingredients and directions into a new recipe page which is very easy to do.

Dictate recipes – If you don’t like to type, you can also talk your recipes into text form that can be cut and pasted into the Add A Recipe form. To see how to do this, see the recent blog post How to Dictate a Recipe Into Your Family Cookbook Project.

Use a photo – One of the most asked questions we get is “How can I scan a recipe and use it in my cookbook?”

If you have a recipe box or collection of recipes that you would like to scan and use as your recipes in a family cookbook, it can be done. However, a problem with scanned or photographed recipes is that the system can not read the text to create titles and indexes and other parts of the cookbook. The computer just sees them as photos.

So you have two options:

You can include the scanned images as photos attached to recipes that you have typed into the system. This preserved the original form of  the recipe card and makes the recipe highly readable.

Second, you can upload the recipe card image on the Add A Recipe form as the recipe itself and just type the recipe title and contributor name. This saves typing and you get to use the image as the entire recipe. You can add personal notes if you want.

So however you get your recipes entered into FamilyCookbookProject.com, it is the first step to creating what will certainly be a treasured family heirloom to be passed down to future generations.

Bill Rice is Founder and Co-Publisher of the Great Family Cookbook Project, a website that helps families and individuals collect, preserve and share food memories by creating their own printed personal cookbooks. He is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook (Available on Amazon), both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!