The Family Cookbook Project

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  • 2 weeks until the Nov 30th Christmas Print Deadline

    2 weeks until the Nov 30th Christmas Print Deadline

    This is just a reminder that if you are planning on having your cookbook printed in time for holiday gift giving, you have just 2 weeks left until the Christmas Print Deadline of November 30th.

    If you place your paid order by November 30th, you will receive your printed cookbooks before December 24th.

    This is by far the busiest time of the year for us because a personalized cookbook makes such a wonderful thoughtful gift for family and friends. There is still time to complete your cookbook, but you need to get moving.

    Orders are processed on a first come, first served basis, so don’t wait until the last minute. Get your print orders in as soon as possible and receive your cookbooks even sooner!

  • Favorite Gift of a Lifetime

    Favorite Gift of a Lifetime

    Cookbook Editor Rebecca Masinter sent us this wonderful photo.

    “I have attached a picture of our mother, Wanda Nicholson, with her cookbook. We presented it at her 90th birthday. It was absolutely her favorite gift of a lifetime. She is having so much fun signing the books and sending them to people. 

    Thank you for the patience and amazing platform to create this family legacy for her.”

    FamilyCookbookProject.com loves to hear from our cookbook editors with stories and photos of how their family cookbook made others happy.

    Please share your story with us as well at Feedback@FamilyCookbookProject.com

     

    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 Pinterest!

  • Remembering Loved Ones With A Family Cookbook

    Remembering Loved Ones With A Family Cookbook

    The loss of a mother or grandmother is a difficult time for most people. The love and nurturing they provide is something that we will never forget is always to be cherished.

    One way to memorialize a loved one who has passed, especially someone who was responsible for cooking for the family, is to create a family cookbook in their honor.

    Often collection of recipes in the form of a recipe box, magazine and newspaper clippings, or cookbooks with pages marked is a great place to start creating a cookbook in someone’s honor.

    Another way to gather recipes is to reach out to families and friends and ask for which foods that person was known for. Getting others to share recipes and memories adds a lot to the process and to the final product.

    When entering recipes into the system, remember to write personal notes about why this recipe reminds you of the person you were honoring. It could be memories of when they’ve made that recipe or serve that recipe or just examples of food that they loved.

    Including lots of photos is also a great way to make your special cookbook a tribute to the one you love.

     

    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!

  • Favorite Recipes From Grandma Preserved

    Favorite Recipes From Grandma Preserved

    They go by many names – Grandma, Nonna, Oma, Granny, and Gram to name a few.

    Their cooking influenced not only what we ate, but what the entire family enjoyed.

    Our Family Cookbook Editors have preserved some of their grandmother’s recipes so that they can be passed down to future generations and help their memories live on forever.

    Here are over 1,000 recipes From our grandmothers for you to enjoy.

     

    Be sure to check out  Granny Peatie’s Scottish Shortbread

    This is a recipe found I found in my own Gram Helen’s recipe box from her husband’s grandmother in St Andrews, Scotland back in the late 1800s. I now make it at least several times a year and every time I do, I think of my Great-Great-Granny Euphemia Summers Peatie.

     

     

    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!

  • One Month Until Christmas Printing Deadline

    One Month Until Christmas Printing Deadline

    This is just a reminder that if you are planning on having your cookbook printed in time for holiday gift giving, you have just 4 weeks left until the Christmas Print Deadline of November 30th.

    If you place your paid order by Wednesday, November 30th, you will receive your printed cookbooks before December 24th.

    This is by far the busiest time of the year for us because a personalized cookbook makes such a wonderful thoughtful gift for family and friends. There is still time to complete your cookbook, but you need to get moving.

    Orders are processed on a first come, first served basis, so don’t wait until the last minute. Get your print orders in as soon as possible and receive your cookbooks even sooner!

  • 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!

     

  • Help Us With A Review Of Family Cookbook Project

    Help Us With A Review Of Family Cookbook Project

    In the online world, customer reviews are one of the most powerful tools to help people who do not have experience with a product to find out if it might be right for them. Positive reviews can really make a difference in attracting new customer to Family Cookbook Project and we need your help.

    Would you kindly take a moment of your time and leave a positive review for us on the rating services below. This will help us attract new users to our site and allow us to continue to offer expanded services and programing to our existing customers.

     

    Thank you for your support.

     

    Bill Rice and Chip Lowell

    Publishers, Family Cookbook Project

  • 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!

  • Family Cookbook Project Wins Best Cooking and Recipe WebAward From The Web Marketing Association

    Family Cookbook Project Wins Best Cooking and Recipe WebAward From The Web Marketing Association

    The Family Cookbook Project (http://www.familycookbookproject.com) has been named the Best Publishing Website in the Web Marketing Association’s 27th annual WebAward Competition for Website 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 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 2003 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 104,000 families and groups have started family cookbooks using the website and contributors have entered more than 2.69 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 (2021, 2020 and 2016) and Best Family Website (2021, 2018). The Family Cookbook Project Blog was also was recognized in 2023 a Blog Standard of Excellence WebAward.

    More than 2,000 sites from 45 countries were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during the 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 WebAward Competition 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 http://www.familycookbookproject.com provides 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 http://www.cookbookfundraiser.com.

  • How to Make a Cocktail In 9 Easy Steps

    How to Make a Cocktail In 9 Easy Steps

    Whether you make your own cocktails at home or order them at a bar, the most basic definition of a cocktail is an alcoholic beverage that has been doctored. Cocktails consist of the spirit, the balancing agents like sugar or citrus juice, the modifiers, and water, regardless of how they are ‘doctored.’ Combined in the right proportions, these elements make a balanced, flavorful drink.

    Here are 9 easy to follow steps in making a cocktail:

    1. Read the cocktail recipe careful, making sure you’re familiar with the techniques & have all necessary ingredients, including ice.
    2. Select a suitable cocktail serving glass (ideally pre-chilled)
    3. Prepare the garnish for your cocktail
    4. Carefully measure & poor ingredients into your mixing glass or cocktail shaker
    5. Add ice to the mixing glass or cocktail shaker
    6. Mix the ingredients (build, stir, shake etc.)
    7. Poor (or strain) the mixed ingredients into the cocktail serving glass (with ice if necessary)
    8. Add the garnish to the serving glass to complete your cocktail

    The final step is of course to serve & enjoy!