The Family Cookbook Project

Category: Editor Tips

  • How To Create A Multi-Part Recipe

    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 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 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 title, 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 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, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!

  • How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    How to Use Scanned Recipes in Your Family Cookbook

    Many computer Printers also include a scanner that can be used for recipes

    Many of us have old recipe boxes that contain many many recipes that are written in the handwriting of someone from the past that we would like to preserve and include it our cookbook. 

    At FamilyCookbookProject.com, you can scan a recipe, personal letter or other family treasure and include it in your cookbook very easily. Here’s how: First you need to scan the recipe card or find someone who can do this for you. Many people have home scanners that are very easy to use – or know someone who has one. 

    When scanning, make sure the scanner saves the image as a JPEG file (check the settings). If it saves it as a PDF, you will need to open the PDF and “save as” a JPEG. Another setting you need to check is the image quality. Usually 150 to 300 DPI (Dots per Inch) is high enough for including in your cookbook. 

    Scanning actually creates a photo image of your recipe card that we can import into your cookbook software. Now your scanned image can be simply placed into your cookbook as you would any other photo.  

    Collections of Scanned Recipes 

    Sometimes family cookbook editors was their entire cookbooks to be a collection of scanned recipes. While not impossible, this can be a lot of work for the editor. 

    The problem with scanned recipes is that the cookbook software system can not read the text in the image 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 way the original item is included above the typed version. I don’t know about you, but my mother’s cursive writing is not always the most easy thing to read (sorry mom) and recipe cards are often smudged with food from meals passed and not always easy to read. 

    The other option is to enter just the title of the recipe and it’s category and leave the rest of the fields on the “add a recipe” form blank. This will give you the title of the recipe and allow an index to be created. Next upload the scanned image of the recipe and save. This way, the image of your recipe will be the recipe itself.

     

    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!

  • How to Take Great Food Photos for Your Recipes

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

  • Preserving Family Recipes For Future Generations

    Preserving Family Recipes For Future Generations

    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 every day 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 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 it’s 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 family cookbook.

    Read the recipes – As editor, it is your responsibility to check the recipes for typos and completeness. If a recipes 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 (Available on Amazon) and the Cape Cod Cocktail Cookbook, 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

  • How To Share Your Family Cookbook Recipes

    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 friends 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 call 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 a 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 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, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!

  • What To Do Once You’ve Printed Your Family Cookbook

    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 – Often times 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 of my go to recipes which allows me to find what I’m looking for so much quicker. I printed one copy and keep it right into the kitchen where I can 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 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!

  • How to Convert iPhone Photos for Use In Family Cookbook

    How to Convert iPhone Photos for Use In Family Cookbook

    Apple is always trying to be seen as innovated, 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 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, both created using FamilyCookbookProject.com. He is also editor of the Donovan Family Cookbook, now it’s third printing.

    Follow Family Cookbook Project on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!

  • Holiday Printing Deadline EXTENDED!!

    Holiday Printing Deadline EXTENDED!!

    If you plan to have your cookbooks printed by us and received by Christmas, the EXTENDED deadline to order and make payment is December 5th. You may certainly order after that, but expedited shipping will be required for last minute delivery.

    We are working around the clock to get the submitted cookbook orders reviewed, printed, bound and shipped as quickly as possible. The sooner you place your order, the sooner you will receive them ready for holiday gift giving!

     

  • Cookbook Editor Recipe Editing Tip

    Cookbook Editor Recipe Editing Tip

    Did you ever wish you could know which recipes you have edited and which you still have to do? Here is an expert tip from Family Cookbook Project Co-Founder Chip Lowell:

    Go to View Recipes by Category.  Unselect all recipes and update.  Now, no recipes are marked to be in the cookbook.  Edit recipes to proof them, and then in edit mode, check the box to include the recipe in the printed cookbook.  In effect, that is now marked as “proofed”.  Work your way through any not yet included.  You can see them all in the View by Category as unchecked any time.

    We hope this makes your job as editor a little easier.

     

    Bill Rice is the Co-Publisher at Family Cookbook Project and CookbookFundraiser.com which helps individuals, churches, schools, teams and other fundraising groups create cherished personalized cookbooks using the power of the Internet to meet funding needs. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest!

     

  • Getting Your Cookbook Ready To Print

    Getting Your Cookbook Ready To Print

    So you’ve collected your recipes, entered them in the cookbook, written your introduction and made all of you are design selections. Now you’re ready to print your cookbook.

    Here are the steps you need to take to get your custom cookbook ready to be printed.

    Lock Your Cookbook

    The first step in getting ready to publish a cookbook is to go to the publishing center in your editors account and lock your cookbook. There are three levels of luck in your cookbook:

    • Level one locks contributors for new recipes.
    • Level two stops all changes by contributors. – Once you start editing, you don’t want people adding new recipes or changing things that you’ve already edited. Checking this box prevents this.
    • Level three locks the cookbook completely and now you’re ready to submit to print.

    Once you locked your cookbook from contributor changes (Level two), now is the time to read everything and check for typos.

    Proofread your introduction

    Print out your narrative and give it to someone else to read. Often it is difficult to proofread your own work and allowing someone else to do it will find things that you would mess.

    Review all of the recipes

    Look for ingredients that are listed but not included in the directions or ingredients in the directions that are not included in the ingredients list.

    Make sure the directions seem complete.

    Check the layout

    Go to the box that says preview your cookbook in the black navigation bar in your editors account. Here you can either download a PDF of your cookbook or use our 3-D preview tool.

    Here you are checking for how pages break. If you find a page with only a word or two, maybe you can shorten version directions to make that recipe just a little shorter.

    The changes you make here will determine how your cookbook will be printed. However it looks in your final PDF preview, is how it will look when your cookbook is printed.

    Place your order

    Now that your cookbook looks exactly the way you want it, it’s time to order.

    On the ordering page you’ll see the number of recipes you’ve entered, and the number of pages in your cookbook. This is what will determine the cost of your cookbook along with the number of color photos.

    Remember that the more copies of your cookbook you are order, the less the price per book will be. This is because the set up charges are spread out over more copies of the cookbook.

    Once you’ve calculated your price, you need to enter your shipping address and click submit. This places your order with our publishing system. You then will be directed to a link that will allow you to pay online or you can send a check drawn on a US bank for payment.

    One frequent question is can cookbooks be sent to more than one address. Currently you would need to place an order for each delivery address.

    Once you’ve placed your order you can expect your cookbooks to arrive in 2 to 3 weeks. However during our busiest times of the year, it could take longer. if you want your cookbooks in time for Christmas, the deadline for ordering is November 30, however do not wait until the last minute if you can.

     

     

    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!