Preserving Family Recipes

Last year I had the honor of working on a project with my grandmother.  We started in March of last year and worked until November collecting and archiving her recipes.  My grandmother cooks by taste and by feel.  She is an incredible cook and I wanted to have her recipes available for generations to come.

We started by compiling a list of what recipes we wanted to include.  The list eventually grew to include over 60 recipes.  Then over the course of the next several months, as my grandmother cooked each of the items she didn't use a written recipe for she carefully measured out everything and made detailed notes.  The items that she cooks that she already had recipes for were written in her handwriting on 5x7 sheets. 

I collected all of the papers, organized them into categories and started designing the template.  We decided on a wire bound book.  I typed most of the recipes but scanned in a few that she had written so everyone would have recipes in my grandmother's handwriting.

We decided against taking pictures of the food and instead put family pictures in the book.  My grandmother wrote a letter of dedication for the front of the book which we also scanned in.  The book was professionally printed and bound and each of my grandmother's children and grandchildren received a copy this past Christmas.

This was one of the most rewarding projects I have done.  I encourage you to preserve the family recipes that are special to your family.  It is not necessary to do a complete recipe book. There are plenty of other options out there.  Martha Stewart has a great article about other methods here.

Preserve those treasured memories.  One day you will be so glad that you did.  For those interested in the recipe book template, leave your email address in the comments section and I will put together a document to send to you.  We don't mind sharing around here!