The Family Cookbook Project

Category: recipe organizer

  • Customizing your Family Cookbook Cover

    One of the things that we are most proud of at FamilyCookbookProject.com is the ability to give complete control of every aspect of making a cookbook to the project’s editor. We provide professionally designed options that are perfect for most people, but some have visions of something different.

    Our last article was about creating custom categories. This article will cover creating a custom cookbook cover or recipe category dividers.

    A custom cookbook cover was the third most popular cover option last year. Some people simply have a white cover with a photo, others with graphic design skills create beautiful designs to personalize  their cookbook. Creativity knows no limit with Family Cookbook Project.

    • When creating a custom cover or divider, here are the specifications to use:
    • Images MUST be in JPG format to be used in your cookbook. GIFs and BMPs will not import correctly.
    • Your images should be 150-300dpi resolution – or they may seem pixilated in printing.
    • Full page with Bleed Custom Covers and Dividers must be sized at 6″x9″ with 4.75″x7.75″ active content or 1800 x 2700 pixels.
    • Full page non-bleed Dividers and other images must be sized at 5.5″x8.5″ with 4.75″x7.75″ active content or 1650 x 2550 pixels.
    • Also, do NOT upload files of the following type — they will not work: .doc, .pps, .ppt, .txt, .htm

    If you wanted to have a special photo on your cover, we suggest to use a page layout program or even a word processing program like Microsoft Word and design the page exactly the way you want it and save it as an image using the guidelines above. Then you can simply upload the image to the FamilyCookbookProject.com site and your custom cover is complete.

     

     

    ill 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!

  • Customizing Your Family Cookbook Recipe Categories

    One of the things that we are most proud of at FamilyCookbookProject.com is the ability to give complete control of every aspect of making a cookbook to the project’s editor. We provide professionally designed options that are perfect for most people, but some have visions of something different.

    One of the things that you can customize went creating your family cookbook project is your recipe categories.  We provide 8 basic recipe categories that organize your recipes into types of meal.

    • Appetizers & Beverages
    • Bread and Muffins
    • Soups, Stews, Salads and Sauces
    • Main Courses: Beef, Pork and Lamb
    • Main Courses: Seafood, Poultry, Pasta and Casseroles
    • Vegetables and Vegetarian Dishes
    • Desserts, Pies, Cakes and Cookies
    • Miscellaneous

    By using our custom category tool, you can add different categories or change them altogether. For example, if you wanted to create a dessert cookbook, the categories would all be dessert related. We’ve also seen people organize their recipe sections by family member.

    You can also create sub-categories or categories within categories. In my personal cookbook I have a category for Seafood and then I have added subcategories for Clams, Fish, Oysters, Crab and Shrimp. This way, if I need a shrimp recipe, they are all grouped together.

    You can create your own Custom Categories and sub-Categories by going to the Recipe Center on your Editor’s Homepage.  Then click on Category Add/edit.   Once you add your new categories, you’ll see a sort field – simply number them as you’d like them arranged and Save.

    One note, if you use both our default categories and your own custom categories, ours will come first, then yours in the order you set.  If you want full control, create all your own categories and set the selection to “Use ONLY your own custom categories” .

    If you need to move recipes, there is a bulk move tool at the bottom of the Category Section Editor.

     

    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!l

  • 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.

    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 and share food memories through customized printed cookbooks filled with treasured recipes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!

  • Family Cookbook Project Expands to the UK

    Family Cookbook Project is pleased to announce that our personal cookbook making software is now available to individuals living in the United Kingdom at FamilyCookbookProject.co.uk

    Since 2004, our ever-expanding website has helped more than 90,000 individuals and families in the USA and Canada create beautiful lasting personal cookbooks. Now individuals in the UK have the ability to enter their best recipes into their online recipe box and create a beautiful printed customized cookbook that they can share with family and friends.

    The website has been modified specifically for the needs of our new UK customers. It has the same functionality that will allow them to collect and enter their favorite recipes into the online program. The communication tools that allow them to Invite others to contribute online are available as well.

    The cookbooks will be printed in Oxfordshire, north west of London, using The latest digital print equipment for fast turn-a-round. Our printer uses 100% renewable energy and works to recycle 99% of their waste.

    Design your own cookbook has never been easier than by using Family Cookbook Project’s professionally developed covers, dividers and layouts to design your on personal recipe book.  Add your recipes, write an introduction and add photos if you wish. Our program will automatically create the table of contents and indexes for you and you’re ready to go.

    Order as many cookbooks as you’d like and download our award-winning app to conveniently access your recipes from your mobile device.

    For more information, visit FamilyCookbookProject.co.uk.

     

    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!

  • Why Create A Family Cookbook Project?

    We asked the editors of the Family Cookbook Project “Why did you create your family cookbook project?”

    Of the more than 2,000 editors who responded to the survey, here are the most popular reasons given to start of family cookbook:

    70% To save family recipes for future generations

    35% To create one source for all my recipes

    34% To give as gifts

    22% To bring my family together

    20% Because it was fun

    Comments most often included the cookbook was used to honor a mother or grandmother and help keep their memory alive after their passing.

    Here are a sample of some of the other comments we received about why they began a family cookbook project.

    Fundraiser to help the church update the fellowship hall.

    Special gift for my son and new daughter in law for their bridal shower.

    Wedding Favors

    I needed a central location for all my recipes.

    To make these recipes available to more people in my family.

    Everyone would always tell me to write a cookbook !!

    My son and family gave it to me as a gift and now I do want to save the family recipes for future generations

    Fundraiser for my son’s school in Arlington Tx.

    To bring co-workers together.

    It helped my sister and I have something to do together with miles separating us. It also helped us for us on the positive things in our lives as my brother in laws health was failing.

    To honor a deceased friend who was a great cook.

    The first cookbook was as a wedding celebration gift for a young member of our family. The purpose of the second cookbook was multi-factoral: 1) we wanted to create an archive/bank for family recipes and photos that were being hoarded by some family members, 2) we wanted to bring the family together, 3) we wanted to create enthusiasm for a family reunion, 4) we wanted to subtly remind family members that all our ancestors were immigrants., hoping to dampted the mean-spirited banter about immigrants that would have been antithetical to all our ancestors’ values.

    To celebrate our town’s 100 year anniversary.

    It was started because someone that I cared about was deployed to Afghanistan. He loved to cook so I told him that I would send him a recipe a day until he was back on American soil. He loved it and sometimes would write about some changes he wanted to make to a recipe. We were going to print it when he got back. I now want to put together a family cookbook because I found how easy it was.

     

     

     

    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!

     

  • Cookbooks for Kids

    One of the reasons we works so hard on a family cookbook is to preserve our favorite recipes for future generations. It is equally important to help that next generation develop a love of good food and cooking at an early age. That is why Family Cookbook Project created a simple cookbook just for the kids in your life.

    Kids Cookbook Project lets you create your own customized cookbook for the special little one in your life. Simply enter your  child’s name and choose boy or girl and immediately preview them in their own special personalized Cookbook! We will then print your full color customized, personalized kids cookbook. It’s just $24.95.

    Keep Kids Interested in Reading …put them in the story! Every child loves a story. A good story helps them to explore their imagination. A great story has them as the main character and holds their interest in reading. That’s what we do! …Kids Cookbook Project makes great stories about children with your child as the main character. And we make it easy and simple to do …as simple as 1-2-3.

    As the holiday’s approach, this would make a great personalized gift for the youngsters in your life. To learn more and to order. visit Kids Cookbook Project.

     

     

    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!

  • Holiday Printing Deadlines for Family Cookbook Project

    The holidays are right around the corner and family cookbooks make a great gift for family and friends – and it is the busiest time for Family Cookbook Project in terms of printing cookbooks for families.

    If you plan to have your cookbooks printed by us and received by Christmas, the deadline to order and make payment is Friday, November 29th. There will be an extended deadline, but expedited shipping will be required. Let us know if we can help!

    If you need your family cookbook for Hanukkah, the print deadline is Friday, November 15th.

    So get your contributors to submit their final recipes and start reviewing everything to get your cookbook ready to print before the holiday deadline to have a wonderful family heirloom to share for generations.

  • Organizing your recipes in your Personal cookbook

    Over the past 15 years, Family Cookbook Project has continually updated its software to meet the needs of you, our cookbook editors. One of the things that we have done is make it easy to organize your recipes as much as you’d like. This blog post will go over some of the ways you can organize how your recipes appear in your personal cookbook.

    Recipe categories

    Recipe categories are general classifications that allow similar recipes to be placed together. For example, appetizers or desserts. Here are some of your options for categories in the Family Cookbook Project:

    Default categories – when you first start your cookbook, these are the categories that are assigned to every cookbook. They are well thought out and can cover just about every type of recipe you may want to add to your cookbook.

    Custom categories – whether you want to add just a single new category or completely redo the categories to best meet your needs, you can use the custom category tool to accomplish this.

    Subcategories – One of the newer additions to the software is the ability to add subcategories to your cat. This allows you to group recipes of a specific category under the main, or top-level, category. For example in the default category appetizers and beverages, you may want to create a subcategory for appetizers and a sub category for beverages. That way each type of recipe appears with like recipes.

    Recipe sorting

    Recipe sorting determines in which order the recipes appear within a category. Here are your options for recipe sorting:

    Shortest to longest – this is the default sorting option. It places the shortest recipes upfront so more recipes can appear on a single page. Usually it is the most cost-effective way to organize your recipes.

    Alphabetical – this is a very popular way to sort your recipes. The titles are organized alphabetically so that As come before the Bs and so on.

    Custom Sort – One of the coolest additions to the software is the ability to sort your recipes anywhere you want. This tool will show you a list of all your recipes and you can move them to the location and it makes sense to you.

    How you sort your recipes is completely up to you. Family Cookbook Project just wants to make sure you have the tools you need to create the perfect personalized cookbook.

    Sample of the custom sort tool




    Bill Rice is the Co-Publisher at Family Cookbook Project which helps individuals and fundraising groups create cherished personalized cookbooks using the power of the Internet. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest.

  • Recipe Standard Measurements

     measuring_cup

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

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

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

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

  • How Many Recipes Does My Cookbook Need?

    spiralbinderclosedOne question every cookbook editor wants to know is how many recipes should my cookbook have? Too many and printing costs are higher, not enough and the cookbook is not as valuable. What’s a family cookbook editor to do?

    Looking at the thousands of cookbooks we have printed over the past decade, there is no real number of recipes that make up a good cookbook  – you have what you have.  We have printed cookbooks with just 15 great recipes and as many as 1200!  However, that 1200 recipe book was 750 pages – HUGE!

    The average size seems to be around 150 recipes and that is why we use that number in our cost calculator.

    When a great cookbook has less recipes, often the editor includes other content to augment the food offerings. Photos of each dish, a section of family photos, a family tree or family stories about people remembered can really add value to a smaller cookbook.

    Larger cookbooks can be impressive simply by the number of recipes it contains. However, since printing cost is directly related to the number of pages that need to be printed, it is important to be mindful of your design choices when choosing your layout options.

    At the end of the day, your cookbook is exactly that – your cookbook. You need to balance the number and quality of the recipes included with the needs of your family.