Do you have a dish you’re famous for when hosting a BBQ? Share a photo of your dish with a brief description and you may have a chance to grill it (virtually, of course) on the daytime TV show Live with Kelly and Ryan.
To learn more and share your photo, go to the Live with Kelly and Ryan Website.
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!
Our hearts go out to anyone in our Family Cookbook Project.com community that have been affected by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, either through sickness, loss of a loss loved one, loss of employment, or the effects of social distancing. This affects all of us and only together will we rise above and beat this crisis.
With the forced isolation brought on by social distancing and quarantines, we have seen an increase in the number of recipes being added to the system each day. Our system is designed to handle any increase in traffic with minimal impact to the user. We hope this also corresponds with an increase in trying new interesting family recipes since dining out options have been limited.
As a Family Cookbook Project editor, here are some ideas to add a silver lining to this crisis.
These are just some simple ideas to help you take your mind off of the difficult times we are experiencing and look forward to a brighter future.
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!
If you’ve followed a recipe, you’ve used cooking oils. However it is easy to be overwhelmed by all the varieties and options of cooking oil. Even when you know what you are looking for it can be tough to navigate through all those bottles and labels!
First things first, what’s the purpose of using cooking oil?
Cooking oils are a type of fat and no matter what he current fad diet says, fat is a nutrient that is required in large amounts in our diet. Oil is just one way to meet our fat needs. Other ways would be using foods that are higher in fat content, like nuts, avocado, eggs, fish, etc… There are different roles of oil in our cooking… Cooking oil can add wonderful flavors and aromas (think olive oil, pumpkin seed oil, walnut oil, etc) which can balance out components like vinegar, lime juice or bitter-tasting vegetables. On top of that, oil can be used as a cooking lubricant when sautéing so that food can be cooked without sticking to itself and the pan.
In vinaigrettes, oil acts as a thickener by creating an emulsion with vinegar. Oil also adheres well to the surface of leafy vegetables allowing it to better coat and evenly distribute over the leaves causing the leaf to darken and its structure to weaken.
Cooking oils can come from a variety of sources. Cooking oils can be made from Nuts and legumes (peanut oil, coconut oil, walnut oil, soybean oil, etc.), Fruits (avocado oil, olive oil, etc.), or Seeds (canola oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, flaxseed oil, etc.). Each oil can add something different to a dish and should be use
Understanding Smoke Point
Smoke point refers to the temperature where an oil starts to burn and smoke. If you go beyond an oil’s smoke point, the oil will not only have a burnt flavor but it’s beneficial nutrients (found in many unrefined oils) will be destroyed and harmful free radicals can be created.
There is a wide range of smoke points for cooking oils. Here is a guide choosing an oil for cooking.
The good news is that with so many cooking oils to choose from, many of us have one or two “go to” oils that fit most of our daily needs. However don’t be afraid to try something new every now and then. You might find something you like better!
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!
Have you ever thought it would be great to get your child or grandchild cooking at an early age? 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 personalized 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.
This would make a great personalized gift for the youngsters in your life and help them learn their way around the kitchen. To learn more and to order. visit Kids Cookbook Project.
Photos are an important part of most cookbooks. Whether it is seeing how a dish should look when it is complete or photos of grandma and her famous cheery pie, photos help a cookbook come to life.
Family Cookbook Project has just released an updated set of advanced tools to help improved the process of adding photos to your cookbook. Here is a list of some of the major enhancements:
Multiple Recipe Photos – Now a recipe can have as many photos as you’d like instead of just a single image.
Add Photos When You Add A Recipe – The “add a recipe” page now has a link to add your photo when you are submitting a new recipe. Before you needed to add the recipe and then go back and edit the recipe to add a photo. This will be a real time saver!
Crop Photo Tool – Our new tools allow you to edit your photo and crop the image right in our software after it is uploaded. No need to do it off line and then re-upload the image.
Improved Recipe Views – All recipe views/lists show thumbnails of all photos on a recipe so you can see which recipes have photos attached.
In addition to the photo improvements, other layout enhancements include:
We at FamilyCookbookProject.com believe recipes are meant to be shared. Sure we all have our “secret recipes”, but if they are not written down and shared, they will not be enjoyed when we are gone.
However we give you the control to determine when and where you share your recipes.
When you or a contributor adds a recipe to your online cookbook, there is an option to make your recipe private. If you check this box just above the save button, your recipe will only be available to those individuals who are logged into your online cookbook. Some people choose this option when a recipe is not yet ready to be shared publicly or they simply want to limit the people who have access to it.
However, there are many benefits to sharing your recipe publicly. Public recipes are indexed by Google and other search engines. You can access your recipes simply by entering your name and the recipe name into Google. Online access from any computer without having to remember your log in information is very convenient.
Family Cookbook Project also searches the public recipes to look for the best recipes to be included one of the Family Cookbook Project’s “Best of” cookbooks we publish. We also promote public recipes on our Facebook pages and on Pinterest. This allows us to highlight your recipes to the other Cookbook Editors, which is truly an honor.
We believe recipes are made to be shared, just like the dishes that are made from them. So next time you enter your favorite recipe into your Family Cookbook Project online recipe box, be sure to mark it public so it can be shared.
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!
Living on Cape Cod, I get the opportunity to enjoy a lot of seafood year round. And there is nothing better than to grow or catch your own food – you know it’s fresh.
Clams are one food we enjoy collecting and cooking whenever we can. I enjoy making Cape Cod Clam Chowder, Clams with Lemon and Basil and especially my mom’s Denise’s Stuffed Clams. The challenge is to enjoy the clams without the sand they live in.
Here’s what you need to know to get the grit out of your clams.
The vast majority of clams, mussels and oysters you buy in the market have been purged already. You will almost never need to purge your clams if you bought them at a supermarket. If you are not sure, just ask.
If you catch your own clams or buy them directly from a shellfisherman, it might be worth your while to purge the sand out before you cook them.
There is a lot of bad information out there about how to purge sand from clams and it can be difficult to separate the knowledge from the folklore. For example adding corn meal to the purging water does nothing for the clams. The reason they have sand and grit in them is because they live buried in sand or mud.
So here is how you Purge sand from your clams:
Next time you go clamming, bring a 5-gallon bucket and fill it with seawater. The clams will be use to the salinity and temperature of that water. It’s perfect for your needs.
You cannot purge a clam in fresh water. Fresh water kills clams. And dead clams are, with few exceptions, no good to eat.
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. He clams every chance he gets and loves many clam dishes. Follow us on Facebook and Pinterest!
Family Cookbook Project has added five new typefaces to the custom recipe layout options for cookbooks created using the Family Cookbook Project system.
Cooper Black is an ultra-bold serif typeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1922. Its use in pop culture increased worldwide since 1966, when the Beach Boys used it for the cover artwork of their album Pet Sounds. It was then featured in the Doors’ L.A. Woman (1971) and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust (1972), and in the opening credits of The Bob Newhart Show, Garfield, and M*A*S*H. As a result, Cooper Black has become emblematic of late-’60s/early-’70s style.
Copperplate Gothic is a typeface designed by Frederic W. Goudy in 1901. While termed a “Gothic” (another term for sans-serif), the face has small glyphic serifs that act to emphasize the blunt terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. It was designed in capitals only, since the design was intended to be used for headings and key words rather than for body text.The typeface is often used in stationery, for social printing and business cards. It is also classically seen acid-etched into glass on the doors of law offices, banks and restaurants.
Curlz is a whimsical OpenType Font display typeface designed by Carl Crossgrove and Steve Matteson in 1995. While decorative and without a historical model, the face bears comparison with the Emigre foundry’s 1991 typeface Remedy.
Hobo Standard is a sans-serif typeface. It is unusual in having virtually no straight lines and no descenders. It was created by Morris Fuller Benton in 1910. There are several theories regarding the font’s name, and in fact it is widely recognized as one of the more interesting mysteries in typographic history. The most complete and most plausible theory demonstrates how Benton, who lived and worked near a large Russian community, must have seen a particular cigar poster spelling what appears to read like “HOBO!” (“ново”, Russian for “New!”). The poster’s hand-lettering of the word bears striking and unique resemblances to the font; the shape of the O at the extreme right of the poster was probably traced by Benton to match his own Capital O precisely, and those shapes helped define the design of the font.
Monotype Corsiva is an italic typeface made in the style of the early Italian cursives, as exemplified by the work of the writing master Ludovico degli Arrighi in the sixteenth century. The capitals are of swash design, with characteristic flourishes, designed primarily for use as initial letters. Corsiva can be used for short text passages in advertising but is best used to add sparkle to invitations, greeting cards and menus, and to give a sense of occasion to certificates and awards. This is also used on the Family Cookbook Project Recipe Tree cover option.
Monotype Corsiva joins seven original typefaces in the Family Cookbook Project Standard Recipe Layout Options: Times Roman, Arial, Comic Sans, Impact, Century Gothic Fancy, Script, and Palatino Centered. The other new type faces are available in the custom layout option for now.
Visit the Custom Recipe Layout option in the Layout and Design Center to see all of the typeface options.
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.
We have already covered creating custom categories and custom cookbook cover or recipe category dividers. This article will cover creating a custom cookbook recipe layouts.
FamilyCookbookProject.com currently offers 19 pre-set recipe layouts that set three aspects of your recipes that are perfect for most editors:
However if you want something different, that is where custom Layouts come in. You can control each section independently – title, contributor name, ingredients, directions and personal notes.
In addition to the font type, size and columns above, you also can control:
This option is not for someone who does not have strong computer skills, but it can be very effective in displaying your recipes exactly how you wish them displayed.
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!
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.
If you wanted t o 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!
