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 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!

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 work on your cookbook during the holidays:

• 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.
• 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 the FamilyCookbookProject.com website. Encourage them to give it a try.
• 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.
• Ask for suggestions for the cookbook cover and recipe layout design. FamilyCookbookProject.com currently has more than 50 cookbook covers to choose from including your own custom cover – with more on the way. It also allows you to select from 15 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.
• 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 spend 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.

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!

If you are planning to use your cookbooks as Christmas gifts this year, you have just about 2 weeks until the Christmas print deadline.

If you plan to have your cookbooks printed by us and in your hands by Christmas, the deadline to order and make payment is Monday, November 30th. There will be an extended deadline, but expedited shipping will be required. Let us know if we can help!

With the pandemic quarantine , so many people had extra time on their hands and put it to good use and worked on their cookbooks. We are now seeing historic levels of editors submitting cookbooks for printing already. So don’t wait until the 30th if you can get your cookbook submitted earlier.

The earlier your cookbook order is in production, the earlier you will receive your cookbooks!

In our house, there is nothing like a warm, soft cookie right out of the oven. However since it is not practical to make dough for only a few cookies at a time, the next best thing is to freeze your cookie dough and pull out enough cookies for your immediate needs.

Freezing cookies also provides time saving opportunities when you want to get ready for a holiday cookie swap in November or getting ready for a school bake sale anytime.

How you best freeze cookies depends on what type of cookie you are making. The FamilyCookbook Project had collected thousands of cookie recipes if you need a suggestion.

Cookies like chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin freeze best if you make the actual cookie beforehand. Scoop out the dough just as if you were about to bake it and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat (they can be close, but not touching). Instead of putting it into the oven, but them into the freezer for at least 6 hours instead. Once frozen, the dough balls get sealed inside a plastic freezer bag and when it is time to bake, you are ready to go.

Cookies like shortbread or sandies, or any smooth slice-and-bake cookies can be pressed into logs, wrapped in wax paper and frozen solid. Prepare the dough as usual, then shape it into one or two logs that can be covered with wax paper and placed in a plastic freezer bag. When you’re ready to bake, let them warm on the counter for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing. You might also want to let the logs thaw in the fridge for a few hours before you’re ready to use the dough. Slice the cookies into thick disks and you’re ready to put them in the oven as usual.

The third type of cookies that can be frozen are cut-out cookies, like sugar cookies and many holiday cookies. The dough for these cookies can be frozen in disks and then stacked together with wax paper between them. When ready to bake, thaw until bendable and continue with the recipe.

Most frozen cookies will need an extra minute or two in the oven. Otherwise, prepping and baking the cookies is exactly the same as in the 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!

The Family Cookbook Project (www.familycookbookproject.com) has been named the Best Publishing Website in the Web Marketing Association’s 24th annual WebAward Competition for Web site development. The Family Cookbook Project creates personalized cookbooks for individuals, families, church groups and schools. This is the fifth year that Family Cookbook Project has been recognized for their Website excellence.

“The Great Family Cookbook Project is a website dedicated to helping families collect and preserve cherished recipes into a printed cookbook that can be passed down from one generation to the next,” says Chip Lowell, Co-Publisher and Technical Director of the Family Cookbook Project. “We are proud that our efforts have been recognized by the Web Marketing Association with this WebAward. We will continue to develop our site to help families, schools and church groups create both online and printed cookbooks that become treasured heirlooms.”

The Family Cookbook Project Website was started as a project in 2004 to help one family collect and organize a family cookbook. Overwhelming feedback from those who used the website led to its continued development and public launch. Currently, more than 81,000 families and groups have started family cookbooks using the website and contributors have entered more than 2 million individual recipes.

“Personalized cookbooks have been around since the 1950s, however the process of collecting and organizing recipes has always been a labor intensive project for the cookbook editor,” says Lowell. “Now it’s easy and cost effective to have your very own cookbook printed. The Family Cookbook Project website provides step by step instructions and tools to help cookbook editors invite others to participate and allow them to enter their favorite recipes directly into the online system. The editor then simply reviews and edits the recipes, selects printing options, and sends the cookbook to be printed. The finished printed cookbooks are then received by the editor in only a few weeks”.

The Family Cookbook Project Website previously been recognized as the Best Publishing Website in 2011 and Best Family Website in 2005. It also was recognized in 2012 and 2009 with the Standard of Excellence WebAward.

More than 2,000 sites from 45 countries were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year’s WebAward competition. Entries were judged on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation, and use of technology. The competition was judged by a team of independent Internet professionals representing a variety of relevant disciplines of Web site development. Judges included members of the media, advertising executives, site designers, creative directors, corporate marketing executives, content providers and webmasters.

About the Web Marketing Association

Since 1997, the annual WebAward Competition is conducted by the Web Marketing Association, an independent organization founded with the purpose of evaluating and recognizing the standard of excellence on the World Wide Web. Award programs run by the Web Marketing Association include the WebAwardCompetition for Website Development, the Internet Advertising Competition and the MobileWebAwards.

About the Family Cookbook Project

The Family Cookbook Project is dedicated to helping individuals and families collect and preserve the time-honored recipes that are so important to our family traditions. The website at www.familycookbookproject.comprovides step-by-step instructions and online tools to create a valuable family heirloom. Personalized cookbooks are also used by schools and church groups as important fundraisers. Groups looking to create cookbooks for fundraising efforts, can also check out www.cookbookfundraiser.com.

Buying an interesting gift for someone who likes to cook is always a challenge. I mean how many squash peelers or specialized kitchen gadgets does a person really need anyway?

Whether you were looking for a Christmas gift for a chef, or a birthday gift for someone who loves to cook, one gift that would be truly appreciated is a personalized cookbook from the Family Cookbook Project.

Your chef can take the collection of recipes collected over many years from different sources and simply enter them into our simple, easy to use software program. When complete, all of those recipes would be contained in a single beautiful personalized cookbook.

After entering the recipes, the software will help the user create a custom cookbook cover or select one of our templates, create automatic indexes and have printed cookbooks delivered directly to their door in a few short weeks.

Family Cookbook Project personal cookbook software is available at Amazon.com.

Here is the link to give as a gift:

http://www.familycookbookproject.com/fcb-prepay-gift.asp

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!