The Family Cookbook Project

Category: Editor Tips

What To Do Once You’ve Printed Your Family Cookbook

You’ve done it. You have collected your recipes, got others to contribute their recipes, picked a cover and recipe layouts and used Family Cookbook Project.com to publish your very own cookbook.

Now what?

The good news is just because you publish your first cookbook doesn’t mean that you have to be done.

Here are some ideas on how to continue using your Family Cookbook Project.com account

Online recipe box – Many people find that they continue adding new recipes to their account even after publishing and printing their personal cookbook. It’s easy to add recipes and it’s convenient to have them all in one place.

Use the mobile app – Access to your online recipes is only a few clicks away with the award-winning Family Cookbook Project mobile app for both Apple iPhones and android devices.

Print a second volume for your family cookbook – Oftentimes once a book is printed new people see its value and want to contribute recipes. Creating a second volume for your family cookbook is a great way to get additional people involved and to keep the project alive.

Create a Best of cookbook – Our family cookbook has over 250 recipes but I personally have about 50 that I like cooking all the time. I created a separate cookbook just for my go to recipes which allows me to find what I’m looking for so much quicker. I printed one copy and kept it right in the kitchen where I could find it quickly.

Create a personal cookbook – If you have created a family cookbook, you were allowed only to include so many of your recipes in order to give everyone a chance to participate. Consider creating a cookbook with just your recipes which will allow you to enter many more then or in the family cookbook.

Contribute to someone else’s family cookbook – Share your cookbook with friends and family and let them know you created at FamilyCookbookProject.com and when they ask you to contribute recipes to their cookbook, you can use the handy recipe transfer tool and select which recipes you want to contribute without having to type any of them in a second time!

Create a fundraising cookbook – Does your church ,school, scout troop or community organization need to raise funds? Suggest a fundraising cookbook and use our system to manage the recipes. Our CookbookFundraiser.com site uses much of the same programming you used and can be a great help to your community group.

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 (Available on Amazon) and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook, all created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Ultimate Donovan Family Cookbook, now in its third printing and is an avid genealogist tracing his family back to the 1600’s.

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February 13, 2023
How To Create A Multi-Part Recipe

Have you ever had a cake recipe that really needed a specific frosting? Or a meat recipe that required a special sauce? Wouldn’t it be great if a recipe could have sub recipes attached to keep them together?

Many of our FamilyCookbookProject.com editors have asked for the ability to have multiple sections or steps in recipes. We like to listen and have added it! Now you can have up to 5 “sub” recipes or steps within a recipe, each with its own set of ingredients and directions. Example? You have Carrot Cake and you want a section for the “Cake” with its ingredients and directions, then “Cream Cheese Frosting” with another set of ingredients and directions.

To use this feature, simply go to Add Recipe or Edit an existing recipe. First check the box for “Show subtitle and make a multi-part recipe” right under the contributor field. This will add a field for the sub-recipe title.

Using our example above, here is where you would add your carrot cake ingredients and directions.

Next, click on the green button to “Add new sub recipe”. This will add fields for a second set of sub recipe titles, ingredients and directions for your Cream Cheese Frosting.

You can add up to five sub recipes for your overall recipe.

When you are done, make sure to click on the green button on the bottom of the page to save your recipe before moving on to your next recipe.

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!

January 27, 2023
How To Share Your Family Cookbook Recipes

One of the real benefits of collecting all of your recipes in your online cookbook on FamilyCookbookProject.com is to be able to share them very easily with friends and family.

Say you have friends over and they really like your split pea soup and want the recipe. All you need to do is go to your cookbook account either on your desktop computer or even on your mobile Mobile phone or tablet and pull up the recipe. Now all you have to do is choose how you want to give it to him.

Email – In the upper right hand corner, you’ll see a box marked email a recipe. Enter your friend’s email here and send them your recipe. It’s that easy!

Posted on Facebook – Wow your friend might like your recipe, so will other friends. You can select the Facebook icon and post your recipe to your Facebook page to be seen by all your friends. Especially if you’ve been adding photos to your recipes, your posts will really stand out and be appreciated by lots of your friends and family.

Posted on Pinterest – Here’s another way to share your recipes if they have photos attached. Pinterest was built around sharing photos and when you share one of your recipes on this social media platform, the photo becomes the pin and people who click on it will see your recipe.

Print your recipe – If your friend simply wants a printed copy of your recipe, it is easy to select the print icon and simply print them a copy and give it to them.

Give them your Family Cookbook – Printing your family cookbook allows you to share all of your recipes with friends and family and is a great gift from the heart.

You also might want to suggest to your friends that they create their own family cookbook account so they can share their recipes as well!

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!

January 16, 2023
How to Take Great Food Photos for Your Recipes

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and with recipes that is especially true.

It’s wonderful to read a list of ingredients and see the potential in a recipe, but to look at the finished product can make your mouth water!

Family Cookbook Project highly recommends adding a photo to every recipe you can in your online cookbook. It helps people to see what to expect when they follow your recipe and gives them a standard to meet when comparing their finished dish to the original.

With the advent of digital cameras built into cell phones, you don’t have to be a professional photographer to take good food photos.

Here are some pointers to help improve your recipe photos:

Use Natural Light – Make sure that the light is right – shoot the food either next to a bright window or under a pendant light in the restaurant. Don’t use your camera’s flash! Set your dish near a window and turn off any artificial lights that might be on nearby. Try to photograph with the light at your back or to the side of a dish, so that the shadows are to the side or behind it.

Hold Still – Taking photos inside, even with ample natural light, often means you have to hold the camera very still to keep it from registering hand shake. If you have a tripod, that’s ideal. If you don’t, you can duplicate the tripod effect by resting your elbows on the table or counter and using them to stabilize the camera. Moving the camera when taking a photo will only lead to blurry unusable photos.

Get close to the food! – Don’t stand back three feet and get the food with the stove, the dirty dishes, and all the condiments around it. Move in and get up close and personal, and let the pan…or the plate…or the cutting board fill the frame.

Stage the shot – The food isn’t the only thing in the photo. Using plates, silverware and linens in complementary colors can help your dish come alive. Shoot food on a beautiful plate or on a table with texture and character. The more appetizing the ingredients, the better your photo will be. Plates that contain colored vegetables and/or meat, preferably in light-colored sauces, are often the most appealing to the eye in photos. Also Don’t be Afraid of a mess. A few crumbs or a smear of dressing can be beautiful, if you let them.

Focus on the food – If you are using a DSLR, stop down your lens to f/1.8 or f/2.0 that limits your depth of field to one part of the image only, blurring out everything around the subject, simulating a shot taken with a macro lens. If you are using an iPhone, there are apps, such as Camera+ or VSCO Cam, that will create the same effect. Remember, you want the food to be the main focus, not the background.

Try different angles – Get up over the food and shoot straight down on it. When shooting overheads, if appropriate, try filling up the frame with what’s already on the table such as cups, wine glasses, utensils and moving hands. You can also think in three dimensions. You might not usually serve brownies piled in a vertical column, but stacking any flat food, like pancakes, cookies, or even onion rings, is a great way to show off texture and make the photo more appealing. You can also add dimension to your food photos by showing the dish right after the first bite is taken, or the second and third. These are little details that make a viewer feel like they’ve sat down and are enjoying the meal.

Get Close to Ugly Foods – Some foods, no matter how good they taste, just don’t make good photos. But the closer you get to your subject, the more the visual story becomes about texture and color, rather than pure mouth-watering beauty. Avoid foods that are white and gloppy, such as congealed gravy on white pasty mashed potatoes.

Size Matters – Make sure your camera settings are set for a good sized photo. Small photos look blurry when they are enlarged online. A photo viewed online only has to be 72 dpi (dots per inch, the measure for quality), but if you are going to print your photo, you want it to be at least 300 dpi. 600 pixels wide (a measurement for size) is a good target for minimum photo size.

Using other’s photos – It is important to note that the Internet makes it easy to find photos of recipes already taken. While this might be much easier, the photo still is the property of whoever holds the rights. Don’t always assume that because a photo is on the Internet you can simply use it for your recipe. Make sure you ask permission from the owner before you use it.

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!

January 11, 2023
How To Add A Co-Editor To Your Family Cookbook Project
With the FamilyCookbookProject.com Publishing System, we recommend that only one person serve as Editor – “too many cooks spoil the soup” so to speak. You really need one person with full control or you cannot keep up with what might have been changed.

That said, you have the ability to promote any contributor to the level of Co-Editor. To do so, go to the Communication Center and click on their name in the list. Check the box next to their username and update. The next time they login they will have access to:
- Editor Activities Menu with all tools
- Add/Edit any recipe to help with cookbook editing
- Communication Center – they can promote/demote users as Co-Editors
We highly recommend allowing only trusted helpers serving as co-editor.

Here is a quick tutorial video that shows you how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99NcfrI-PKM

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!
December 28, 2022
How to Convert iPhone Photos for Use In Family Cookbook
Apple is always trying to be seen as innovative, such as introducing “live photos” that seem to move when you view them on your phone or iPad. To accomplish this, they created a new image format called HEIC (High Efficiency Image File Format) that was rolled out in 2017.

Family Cookbook Project (and most web sites) accept JPG photos only. If you are having issues with photos not uploading correctly, check to see if the file format on your Mac is HEIC. That is Apple’s compressed format. The good news is that it’s easy to convert to JPG.

Here’s how to convert HEIC to JPG on Mac using Preview:
1. Open any HEIC image in Preview.
2. Click File ➙ Export in the menu bar.
3. Select JPG in the format dropdown and adjust other settings as needed.
4. Choose Save.
Here’s how to convert HEIC to JPG on PC using Microsoft Paint:
1. Open the file in Paint
2. Go to File>Save As>JPEG picture
3. Click Save.
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!
December 11, 2022
Give the Gift of Family Cookbook Project Lifetime Membership!
Looking for a way to give Family Cookbook Project to a friend or family member so they can start their own printed cookbook filled with favorite recipes, a gift that will be remembered for years to come?

Get them a Family Cookbook Project Gift Certificate.
- You’ll receive a full color Personalized Gift Certificate in their name that can be downloaded at home – no need to wait for something to be delivered.
- A great last-minute gift or stocking stuffer.
- Easy to redeem and start their own account
- They get lifetime access to their account and can create multiple cookbooks
- The get a valuable online recipe box available through our mobile app
- Preserves their recipes for future generations
- You might even get a copy of their first cookbook for getting them started!
Get your Family Cookbook Project Lifetime Membership Gift Certificate Today and receive 50% off for a limited time!
December 9, 2022
5 Ways To Improve Your Family Cookbook Over The Holidays

The holidays are a time when we get all of our family together and celebrate together with food, fun and festivities. It is also a great time to motivate others in the family to contribute to your family cookbook project.

Here are some ideas to help you improve your cookbook during the holidays:

1)    When you see family members, remember to talk about the cookbook and how excited you are as it moves forward. Others will see your enthusiasm and be more willing to help contribute. event

2)    When someone brings a delicious dish to a family gathering – ask for the recipe. People are often proud of their food creations and love to share recipes. If they don’t have it with them, let them know contributing recipes is easy on FamilyCookbookProject.com. Encourage them to give it a try.

3)    Take photos of all the great food being shared. Photos of dishes really bring recipes to life. Photos can be easily added to your recipes on FamilyCookbookProject.com and can or do not have to be included in the printed version.

4)    Ask for suggestions for the cookbook cover and recipe layout design. FamilyCookbookProject.com currently has many professionally designed cookbook covers to choose from including your own custom cover – with more on the way. It also allows you to select from a host of different recipe layout options. Print a hardcopy of several of the designs and ask family members what they think. Not only will the choice be easier to make with feedback, but you will get them more interested in contributing to the cookbook.

5)    Use the index to show family members the recipes in the cookbook. If you’re close to having your cookbook completed, bring the cookbook’s index and a cover page printed from your printer to family holiday events. Show it around and let people see who and what has been submitted already. Maybe they will see a recipe that is missing and want to contribute or maybe they will place an advance order for the final edition.

With so much time spent in the kitchen around the holidays, it’s no wonder that cooking and recipes and cookbooks and food are talked about constantly as everyone pitches in to prepare our holiday get together. Creating your family cookbook will become a valuable resource for generations to come.

Happy Thanksgiving from The Great Family Cookbook Project!

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!

November 22, 2022
Making A Recipe Your Own

Recipes are all around us. We find recipes that become favorites and mainstays for our own families. Printed cookbooks, from friends and family, old recipe boxes, magazines, newspapers, websites are all sources of great recipes.

When we find a new recipe, we often will modify that recipe to make it our own. Sometimes it is by eliminating some of the ingredients, adding different ingredients for different amounts of the ingredients, or simplifying the directions. All are ways that we make a recipe our own.

Family cookbook project makes it easy for you to get these recipes into your own family cookbook. Whether you type them in, cut and paste them from a document or website or upload an image of the recipe, we make it easy to collect your favorite recipes in one printed cookbook.

However, we also have a responsibility to those people who created the original recipe. It is very appropriate in your personal note to include the source of the original recipe.

While it is generally accepted that recipes cannot be copyrighted, photos certainly are. If you add a photo from a recipe that you found until you’ve been able to make the recipe and replace it with your own photo, you should mark your recipe private so it is not shared with anyone else outside your cookbook.

For further reading, here are some links to articles on copywriting recipes.

Copyright Office flyer on recipes
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

Copyrighting Recipes
http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/copyright/copyright-realworld/recipe-copyrighting.html

Questions & Answers – Copyrighting Recipes
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/CookbookAdvice.htm

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!

November 15, 2022
The Holidays Are The Best Time to Start a Family Cookbook

To most of us, the year-end holidays are a time of family, friends and a lot of food. While these times can be hectic with all of the running around that needs to be done, it is also the best time to start a family cookbook project, says one expert.

“Many of the family holiday traditions start in the kitchen and center around the meals we serve our family and guests at this time of the year”, says William Rice, Founder and Co-Publisher of the Family Cookbook Project. “What better way to celebrate our family food traditions than to preserve them for future generations in a family cookbook. There is no better time to start planning a family cookbook than over a wonderful meal during the holidays”.

A successful family cookbook needs at least one dedicated individual to lead the project as editor. This person gets the project off the ground and invites family members to contribute recipes. Once a labor intensive task, now families are using the Internet to simplify the project. “A website, such as FamilyCookbookProject.com, can provide step by step instructions and tools to help the family member serving as cookbook editor to contact others and encourage them to enter their favorite recipes directly into the online system,” says Rice “The editor then simply reviews and edits the recipes, selects printing options, and sends the cookbook to be printed. The finished printed cookbooks are received in a few weeks time and can be enjoyed and preserved forever.”

Here are some tips from Familycookbookproject.com to help make your family’s personalized cookbook a success:

Start talking about the project over dinner – Enjoying the food and dishes we love while being asked to contribute recipes will make the value of the project more real and worthwhile.

Have a sign up list for those who want to participate – Get everyone’s telephone number and email address in one place. This will help when it is time to be in contact with them over the project.

Pass out recipe forms after the meal – Having printed recipe forms lets people know what they need to provide and shows them how little work contributing will be.

Invite everyone to participate – Don’t just invite the family cooks. Everyone has at least one recipe that they can contribute to the cookbook. Use email to invite and stay in touch with contributors. Let them see what others have submitted to encourage them to keep adding their best recipes.

Set a deadline – Set a deadline one or two months in the future to have all of your recipes submitted. Most people work better if they know they face a hard deadline. If you don’t have enough recipes at the deadline, you can always extend it.

Keep in touch – After the holidays, keep in touch with everyone via email. Send regular updates and let them know who is participating and who is not. Set a goal to have every family member contribute at least one recipe so they can be listed in the list of contributors.

Consider using a Website, like Familycookbookproject.com, to help organize your family cookbook. Here are just some of the benefits of www.FamilyCookbookProject.com:

– Editors can send contributors an email to invite them to participate in the family cookbook. The site also makes it easy to send regular updates by email to some or all of the contributors.

– Allows individuals to enter their recipes directly into the online family cookbook so it does not fall entirely on the editor.

– Provides an easy way to share recipes online. Contributors have access to everyone’s recipes even before the final family cookbook is printed.

– Provides many options for recipe layout and cover selections or allows you to create your own cover.

Family cookbooks are an important way to preserve our mealtime traditions for future generations. With the passing of our loved ones comes the loss of treasured food traditions. A family cookbook ensures that the recipes from one generation can be passed on to the next as a treasured family heirloom. Once the recipes are preserved online, they can be shared with other family members by email, printed individually and included in your own professionally printed cookbook.

For more information on how your family can make a family cookbook, go to www.FamilyCookbookProject.com.

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!

November 5, 2022