Shared at Our Family Table
I think it must be true of all families, that some of the warmest memories involve cooking (and eating!)
Special dinners, birthday cakes, holiday cookies… And perhaps most of all, heartfelt conversations around the kitchen table. At a bookstore several years ago, I remember seeing the book Kitchen Table Wisdom, and picking it up because it instantly evoked that emotional memory. (By the way, I bought the book and it is now a favorite!)
Anyway… One year for Christmas, I decided to gather family recipes, photos, and stories, and bind them into books to send out to my family members. I was pregnant at the time, so my thoughts naturally turned toward our expanding family tree.
Because I am a lousy proofreader and I did not think to have the manuscript proofread by someone else who was NOT a lousy proofreader, my book ended up quite flawed in the recipe department. But the “family stories” part and the “family tree” part were a success (as far as I know!)
I’ll share a few photos of the books I made, and also some tips if you want to try this for yourself. These books would be great for holiday gifts or for family reunions.
For the cover, I made a collage of family photos, and then made color photocopies (but nowadays you could just use a scanner and a printer). Then I had them laminated so that they could withstand kitchen splatters. (You could also use 3-ring binders and insert the scanned photo collages into the cover pockets.)
To collect the family recipes and stories, I sent letters to my relatives asking for submissions. I asked for stories related to the recipes, and also any other family stories thay wanted to share. (If I did the project again, I would also solicit family pictures, especially ones that depicted meals or kitchens.)
When arranging the content of the book, I sometimes tried to match the story to the content (for example, putting a story about desserts that were hidden behind the door of a pie safe, in the “desserts” section of the book), and other times just sprinkled them randomly.
Of course you should always denote the person who sumbitted the recipe, and also the person recognized as the original source of the recipe. (For example, several of my relatives sent recipies of their grandmothers’.)
It is also fun to give the dishes fun titles like “Aunt Sarah’s World-Famous Potato Salad” or “That Great Apple Pie that Grandma Always Served at Thanksgiving” or “Cousin Suzy’s Secret-Ingredient Three-Bean Salad”.
Since I was doing color photocopies at my local copy shop, I created a special photo section of the book to save money. But if I did the project again, I would use my scanner and scatter the pictures throughout, trying to put appropriate pictures on each recipe page.
For the last page of the book, I created a fold-out family tree diagram. This wasn’t easy, but I was starting from scratch. I think it is now easier to find computer resources to do a family tree diagram. It also took a fair amount of consultation with the relatives to make sure I got all the details right. The book itself was standard printer-paper size (8.5 inches by 11 inches), and the foldout was 11 X 17 inches. (actually slightly less, so that it would fit properly in the bound book.
Knowing that many recipes wind up on scraps of paper, I also made a “pocket page” at the back. You could just purchase packages of pocket pages designed for binders, but I made my own using large sheets of heavy paper or cardstock. The width of the paper was 17 inches, and the height maybe 16 inches or so. I got the odd-size paper from a local printer.
To make the pocket, first make a long horizontal fold, to create a sheet 17 inches wide and 11 inches tall. Then create a vertical fold, folding the sheet exactly in half to create an 8.5 x 11 inch page with pockets on both sides. (Binding the unfolded edge into the book, seals up the loose edge of the pocket.)
I chose a comb binding, which was done by my local copy shop.
The book was a hit with the relatives (until they tried to make the chocolate cake and realized that my typos made the ingredient measurements incorrect! I reiterate, get someone to proofread it for you…)
