The Family Cookbook Project

Category: How to Ideas

  • Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    Anatomy of a Great Recipe

    One of the keys to a great family cookbook is to have great recipes that your family and friends have come to love. Here are some simple tips to help you capture the magic of the food you make.

    1. Use catchy titles. Using a catchy title will make your recipe sound more interesting. It is more interesting to people when they see the title “Gooey Triple Chocolate Cake” rather than just “Chocolate Cake”. When you are writing a title for a recipe, try to think of not only what the final dish will be, but what makes it special as well.

    2. Include photos. Using images in your recipes can allow the person reading your cookbook to see what the final dish will look like and give them a guidepost to follow. Next time you make one of your special dishes, snap a quick photo and add it to your recipe the next time you log in.

    3. Be specific with your Ingredients. For many cooks, include a can of crushed tomatoes in your recipe and they know exactly what you mean or maybe not. Tell them to include a 12oz can of crushed tomatoes and everyone will know exactly what your recipe needs.

    4. Use step by step instructions. You might have made this recipe a thousand times, but someone new will need detailed directions for how to do it. Remember to include pan sizes, cooking times, the order that ingredients are added and how to tell when a dish is done. Also adding how many servings a recipe can make will help with meal planning.

    5. Add personal notes. One of the things that make a family cook so important is that it helps to capture the family traditions. Include a note with each recipe about how you first were introduced to the recipe and when it is typically served in your household. It makes the recipe more interesting and more meaningful to later generations.

     

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

  • Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom will have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used to wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from the bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

     

    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 Family Reunion Cookbook Brings Families Together

    A Family Reunion Cookbook Brings Families Together

    The Donovan Family Reunion

    Few gatherings are as meaningful and memorable as family reunions. As families grow and people go their own ways, family reunions serve to bring us back together. They’re a chance to recombine, share experiences and renew connections.

    One great idea to make your family reunion truly memorable is to create a family cookbook. Everyone knows the best thing about a family reunion is the food! Everyone brings their favorite dishes and shares stories and food and fun.

    There are two different schools of thought on the best way to create a family reunion cookbook. You be the judge on what is best for your family.

    Reunion Specific Cookbook

    Since reunions take a fair amount of time to plan and often center around a theme, choosing a theme centering on food can be a natural choice. Family members are asked to contribute their favorite recipes to a family cookbook that can be distributed at the event. You set a date and ask everyone to contribute the recipes for the food they will be bringing to the event. The cost of printing the cookbooks is included in the cost of the event and everyone receives one the day of the event. This is also a great way to build buzz for your event!

    Reunion Showcase Cookbook

    The other way families create family cookbooks at family reunions is to use the event to show a sample of what a family cookbook looks like and collect email addresses used to invite contributors.  People will see your excitement and want to participate as well. Find your favorite dishes at the event and ask whoever made them to contribute the recipe to the cookbook. They will be flattered that you asked and look forward to participating.  Set a deadline that will allow you to have your family cookbooks complete so people can give them as gifts for the holidays.

    Some things to consider when creating your reunion cookbook

    During the planning process, many families are looking for a way to communicate effectively via email. Adding lots of people to the sender line of an email list can result in people being left off and not being able to contact specific people or subsets of the list. FamilyCookbookProject.com can help make this easier. Use our Reminder Email Tool and you make it easy to contact some or all of your family members.

    Don’t wait until the last minute. When planning a family reunion cookbook, the event is a fixed date and comes and goes whether your cookbook is ready or not. Now is the time to start working on a family reunion cookbook if your event is in the summer.

    Remember to invite everyone to participate, not only the great cooks! This cookbook is for all the family members so it best to invite everyone to contribute – even if it is only a recipe or two.

    Finally remember family members no longer with us by including their recipes as well. Family cookbooks help to tell the story of our families. Contributors can be not only the present, but from the past 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!

  • How To Not Type Your Recipes into a Family Cookbook

    How To Not Type Your Recipes into a Family Cookbook

    For many people, 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 our blog post How to Dictate a Recipe Into Your Family Cookbook Project.

    Use a photo – 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.  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 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 Create a Single Topic Cookbook

    How To Create a Single Topic Cookbook

    Do you have a lot of recipes of a specific type? Maybe you love to make cookies or pies or cakes. You can create a “mini cookbook” to organize your recipes and even share with family and friends using FamilyCookbookProject.com.

    With as few as 10 recipes, you can create a single category cookbook or multiple categories within a theme.

    For example, where I live, oysters are plentiful and are some of the best in the world. My family eats a lot of oysters each summer and I thought it would be great to create a cookbook with just oyster recipes. It was so well received, it is now available on Amazon!

    You can buy a copy of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook by clicking on this link.

    Next, I plan on creating a BBQ mini cookbook and giving it out as gifts for Christmas to my friends and family. After that, maybe desserts or seafood recipes!

    To create your own mini cookbook, go to the Production Center on your editor page and select “more cookbooks”. Here you can create your own mini cookbook and even import your recipes from your main cookbook using our recipe transfer tool.

     

     

    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.

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

  • Homemade Aioli Makes Every Sandwich Better

    Homemade Aioli Makes Every Sandwich Better

    Ever get a gourmet sandwich at a restaurant and wonder how they made it so flavorful?  How about a basket of fries with a special dipping sauce? We’re talking about the fancy mayo we can’t get enough of – aioli. But what is aioli in the first place?

    What Is Aioli?

    Just like mayonnaise, aioli is an emulsion, a mixture of two ingredients that naturally don’t want to mix and are forced together. The oil never truly combines with the rest of the ingredients, but rather becomes suspended in the liquid after being vigorously whisked in, one drop at a time. In mayo’s case, that means oil and a water-based liquid, like vinegar or lemon juice, plus egg yolk.

    Aioli, which means “garlic oil” in French, is a different story, yet still similar. The traditional condiment, made with olive oil, rather than mayo’s typical canola, is also an emulsion, but as you can imagine, it’s tough to get oil to combine with raw garlic alone. Since this emulsion was prone to breaking, which would leave you with greasy, unappetizing mush, people started to use egg yolk in aioli, too—the ingredient that helps keep the oil suspended.

    With the addition of egg yolk, aioli became more similar to mayonnaise. And over time, aioli and mayo basically became interchangeable terms. Aioli today is often just mayonnaise spiked with a lot of garlic, but it can also refer to any specially seasoned mayo.

    While today’s “aioli” may not exactly be true to the original, we’re not complaining—it saves us the elbow grease, plus the flavor can still be just as heavenly – even if you start with store-bought mayonnaise.

    There’s no need to spend your whole day trying to perfect an emulsion. You can simply spruce up homemade or store-bought mayonnaise with garlic, citrus juice and any other ingredients you crave in a creamy, decadent dip, sauce or spread.

    Here’s a list of ingredients you can try and turn your basic mayo into a tasty aioli:

    • Minced raw garlic – The classic.
    • Roasted garlic – Roasting gives the garlic a subtle, buttery, almost caramelized flavor.
    • Sriracha  – This is what is served in most sushi restaurants.
    • Wasabi Cilantro – Another spicy option with an Asian flair
    • Browned Butter and Lemon – Try this on a lobster roll!
    • Rosemary – A wonderfully subtle flavor
    • Roasted Red Pepper – A perfect dip for veggies
    • Sweet Relish – Better known as Tartar Sauce
    • Lemon-Dill – A light and fresh alternative
    • Chimichurri – Left overs from steak night can make a interesting aioli
    • Truffle oil – Perfect for French fries

    For the amount of how much to use, it is best to work by taste. Add a little, give it a stir and give it a taste. Repeat until it acquires the taste you enjoy.

     

    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!

  • Make Every Sandwich Better with Homemade Aioli

    Make Every Sandwich Better with Homemade Aioli

    Ever get a gourmet sandwich at a restaurant and wonder how they made it so flavorful?  How about a basket of fries with a special dipping sauce? We’re talking about the fancy mayo we can’t get enough of – aioli. But what is aioli in the first place?

    What Is Aioli?

    Just like mayonnaise, aioli is an emulsion, a mixture of two ingredients that naturally don’t want to mix and are forced together. The oil never truly combines with the rest of the ingredients, but rather becomes suspended in the liquid after being vigorously whisked in, one drop at a time. In mayo’s case, that means oil and a water-based liquid, like vinegar or lemon juice, plus egg yolk.

    Aioli, which means “garlic oil” in French, is a different story, yet still similar. The traditional condiment, made with olive oil, rather than mayo’s typical canola, is also an emulsion, but as you can imagine, it’s tough to get oil to combine with raw garlic alone. Since this emulsion was prone to breaking, which would leave you with greasy, unappetizing mush, people started to use egg yolk in aioli, too—the ingredient that helps keep the oil suspended.

    With the addition of egg yolk, aioli became more similar to mayonnaise. And over time, aioli and mayo basically became interchangeable terms. Aioli today is often just mayonnaise spiked with a lot of garlic, but it can also refer to any specially seasoned mayo.

    While today’s “aioli” may not exactly be true to the original, we’re not complaining—it saves us the elbow grease, plus the flavor can still be just as heavenly – even if you start with store-bought mayonnaise.

    There’s no need to spend your whole day trying to perfect an emulsion. You can simply spruce up homemade or store-bought mayonnaise with garlic, citrus juice and any other ingredients you crave in a creamy, decadent dip, sauce or spread.

    Here’s a list of ingredients you can try and turn your basic mayo into a tasty aioli:

    • Minced raw garlic – The classic.
    • Roasted garlic – Roasting gives the garlic a subtle, buttery, almost caramelized flavor.
    • Sriracha  – This is what is served in most sushi restaurants.
    • Wasabi Cilantro – Another spicy option with an Asian flair
    • Browned Butter and Lemon – Try this on a lobster roll!
    • Rosemary – A wonderfully subtle flavor
    • Roasted Red Pepper – A perfect dip for veggies
    • Sweet Relish – Better known as Tartar Sauce
    • Lemon-Dill – A light and fresh alternative
    • Chimichurri – Left overs from steak night can make a interesting aioli
    • Truffle oil – Perfect for French fries

    For the amount of how much to use, it is best to work by taste. Add a little, give it a stir and give it a taste. Repeat until it acquires the taste you enjoy.

     

    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!

     

  • 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 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!

  • Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Bring Two Families Together With A Wedding Cookbook

    Here’s an idea for a truly unique wedding gift for a special couple – a printed cookbook filled with the bride and groom’s favorite family recipes and photos. It’s a great way to bring both families together before the wedding, makes a wonderful bridal shower theme, can be used as a wedding favor and gets the new couple cooking with family favorite recipes.

    Here’s how to create your own wedding cookbook:

    It starts with a bridal shower.

    One thing every new bride to be needs is great recipes to feed her family, especially with everyone needing to stay at home so much more these days. Both families as well as friends can help get this started by contributing recipes as part of a bridal shower!

    When you send out your bridal shower invitations, include a link to your FamilyCookbookProject.com cookbook, use the Invitation Tool and add everyone’s email. This will send everyone a link that will allow them to contribute their recipes. Set a deadline for entering recipes about three weeks from when the invitations are sent. Remember people will always wait until the deadline!

    Get both of the mother’s to contribute the most recipes if possible. This way both the bride and groom with have lots of recipes that they grew up with in their cookbook. Using Family Cookbook Project’s Custom Categories Tool, you can even create a special category for each mom’s recipes.

    As the recipes are being entered, start planning how the cookbook will look.

    Select a cover – Family Cookbook Project offers several cookbook covers specifically for bridal cookbooks or wedding cookbooks. You also can create a custom cover with the name of the cookbook and a photo of the couple.

    Write an introduction – The best bridal cookbooks will have an introduction written by the individuals giving the bridal shower. An introduction can be used wish the couple well wishes and to talk about the importance of family.

    Add Photos – Photos can help bring your cookbook to life. You can add photos of the lucky couple on top of recipes, or create custom pages to highlight photos of the bride and groom as they were growing up and while they were dating.

    Print your cookbook – Make sure you give yourself enough time to order your cookbooks and have them printed, at least 3-4 weeks if possible. Be sure to order enough copies for each attendee as well as several extra copies for family members that can not attend the event.

    For the event, make some of the dishes from bridal cookbook and serve them at the event. Include a place card with the dish name and include the page number from the cookbook.

    Finally, if you are looking for a great wedding favor, you can print additional cookbooks and give them to everyone attending the wedding!

     

     

    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. His son Conor was married in 2021. 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 Best Serve Oysters

    How to Best Serve Oysters

    If you’ve ever been to Wellfleet OysterFest, you’ve seen thousands of people enjoying freshly opened Wellfleet Oysters by the bushel full – served on paper plates. While this might work for this huge event, there are better ways to serve them at home.

    The difficulty of serving Wellfleet oysters is their non-uniform rounded bottom shape. Rarely will one have a flat bottom that allows the oyster meat and liqueur to stay in the shell. So there are a number of ways to present your oysters that will overcome this challenge.

    • Crushed Ice – Oysters on the half-shell should be served chilled. The best way to do that is to serve them on a bed of crushed ice. Most of us don’t have an ice machine at home that can churn out crushed ice on demand, but if you have a food processor, you’re in business. If you don’t have a food processor, you can try crushing ice in a blender or by hand with a mallet.  Once you have the needed ice, place it evenly in a rimmed bowl or serving dish. Add some salt to the ice which will help it not to melt as fast. Finally place your oysters onto the ice and you’re ready to serve.
    • Rock Salt – You can serve oysters on a bed of rock salt. Rock salt won’t melt like ice and can be used again and again if you save it. Like the ice, you can place it evenly in a rimmed bowl or serving dish and nestle the oysters onto the salt. The other option is to create small individual piles of salt and place an oyster on each one.
    • Aluminum Foil – You can serve oysters on a crinkled piece of aluminum foil. This is a great way to hold your oysters while you are shucking and it can make an effective low-cost presentation, especially if you have a lot of oysters to pass around.
    • Oyster Plate – Buy an Oyster plate. Wellfleet has many wonderful gift stores that offer many oyster related items. One popular item is an oyster plate with individual rounded areas that typically holds six oysters. It’s best to have a couple of these plates available to serve your Wellfleet oysters.

     

    Bill Rice is the author of The Wellfleet Oyster Cookbook 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, Instgram, YouTube and Pinterest!