Creating a Family Cookbook

A mockup of the cookbook.

For Christmas this year, I wanted to do something special. I wanted to create a collection of family recipes that also included a little family history. I really didn't like the layouts I found online, and I wanted something more creative and fun. They looked too impersonal and too much like a church fund-raiser. I did find some nice templates for cookbooks with iBook Author that are ready to use. All you have to do is drop in photographs and videos and then copy and paste recipes. I liked the cover for one of the templates and decided to use it for this project. Since I did not have a lot of media to use in creating the cookbook, I used Book Creator on my iPad. In fact, this entire book was created using an iPad. 

The first step in any project is to get organized. I used Evernote to keep the recipes and photographs I collected for the project. Every time my aunts or cousins contacted me with a new recipe to add, I immediately added it to Evernote so I didn't lose it. This also made it easier to copy and paste recipes into the book. When I added a photograph to Evernote, I noted who was in the photograph, where the photograph was taken, the date of the photograph, and who gave it to me. As a family historian, I understand that the more information included with an artifact, the better. 

Since the late 1980s, I've been keeping records of my family history. I've recently digitized my collection and shared most of it online using FamilySearch.org. It's a free website that is a collaborative effort at documenting genealogy. I still maintain a paper archive of records, but I also keep a digital copy of everything in Evernote. Over the summer, I completed a two-year scanning project of family photographs. There were over 10,000 digital items scanned by the end of last summer. Of course, you do not have to go through this much trouble to put together a simple cookbook. Since I've been doing all of this research, I decided to share some of it in the cookbook.

There are no templates in Book Creator so you will be starting from scratch. The app is user-friendly and one that I frequently use for projects. You can add photographs, video, and recordings. When you finish a project, you can save it as an epub, pdf, or a video file. Before you begin, decide exactly how you want the book to look and what you want to include in the book. This will save you a lot of time. The elements I included in my book are:

Cover page

Title page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Family trees

Recipes

Project layout in Book Creator.

As I mentioned before, I used a cover photo I found in iBook Author as my cover for this project. I changed it to look the way that I wanted it to look. Then I made a screenshot of the cover page and added it to Book Creator. Adding a title page may seem redundant, but it is also a necessary one. A title page gives a clear copy of the title, author/editor, and publication. 

The title page

My next pages are the copyright page and acknowledgments. Any work that you do, you should sign and date it and that's what I used the copyright page for. On this page, I included my name, the title, my self-publication identity (Farmhouse publishers) along with the location and date. On the following page, I wanted to give credit to the people who helped me with the project. I make it a rule to say thank you because not everyone is willing to help. 

Copyright and Acknowledgment pages.

Every work needs to have a written statement of purpose. In my introduction, I stated the purpose of the book as well as how I gathered the recipes and the photographs. As a keepsake, it is important to document the how, why, and when. I wanted to be sure that years from now when my great, great-granddaughter picks up a copy of this book, she will be in no doubt of its intentions or its documentation. 

The introduction.

The addition of the family trees in the cookbook was an attempt to connect the present with the past. It also identified the people who contributed recipes and how we are all related. One of the most confusing aspects about genealogy is when people write their family stories, they call their relatives "grandma" or "dad" or "mother" and I lose track as to who exactly they are talking about. I try to avoid doing this. It may seem strange to call my grandmother by her name, Willeen, but it will be clear to those who pick up my work as to who I am talking about. With this dilemma in mind, I made sure to add a family tree for easy reference. I used the family tree that is created on FamilySearch.org. There is a Portrait Pedigree Chart that can be downloaded for any ancestor. I used the charts for my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother. 

Horne Family Tree

Spears Family Tree

The final section of the cookbook is the recipes. I decided on two layouts designs for the pages. I wanted to keep them simple without a lot of color to keep the price down when printing them out and sharing with relatives. The first layout includes the recipe and a photograph of the family.

The second layout design is the recipe with a profile photograph of the person who created the recipe.

You can organize your recipes in any way that you want. I only had a handful of recipes, so I dispersed them haphazardly throughout the book with no real organization in mind outside of aesthetics. When I finished the project, I saved the file as a .pdf - one "side by side pages" for viewing on a tablet and one file as "single pages" for printing. I also saved it as a video file to use for an advertisement video. The unedited video runs 4:44 minutes long and is incredibly boring when it is not edited.

You can find a free download of the cookbook on my website!

The printed edition of The Family Table.

Book trailer.

Review: The First Days Of School: How To Be An Effective Teacher

The First Days Of School: How To Be An Effective Teacher by Harry K. Wong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are a few good ideas in this book worth noting, especially in regards to classroom management and being prepared for the classroom and teaching. On the whole, I am skeptical of some of the advice given and the last section (Section E) could be completely eliminated. I found Section E to be a little patronizing, especially the part where our culture is blamed as the reason why people are not successful. Wong spent much of the book criticizing inefficient teachers and makes a great case. So good, in fact, I wonder that inefficient teachers should be part of the problem as well. I also took offense to the idea that teachers are to preserve and restore the values of the nation (page 320). I did not go into teaching to brainwash students into falling into the nationalism trap. Teachers should focus on teaching students to think for themselves (which is repeated often throughout the book) and nationalism contradicts this notion.

The book comes with a disc that contains a video and a mp3 of a pep talk by Wong. I felt like I was listening to a used car salesman. There were times while reading the book that I felt as if it was more self-promoting than actually giving important information.

Although the book has its problems, I will refer back to it on occasion (classroom management is very helpful) and would most likely recommend the book to others with warnings about the ineffectiveness in some areas.

View all my reviews

Review: Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World

Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry W. Hurtado
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In Larry W. Hurtado's book Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World, early Christianity is shown as a very different kind of religion compared with the religious thought of the ancient Roman world. Hurtado, an Emeritus Professor at the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, unfolds the little-known origins of Christianity in a thoughtful and thorough monograph. Throughout the book, he highlights the features of early Christianity that were different than those of ancient Romans, and how these differences became widespread assumptions about religion in general in the modern era.

In the preface and the introduction, the foundation of the study is laid by describing the Jesus-movement that emerged during the first three centuries CE. Despite the many differences that made Christians stand out among the ancient crowd, the religion spread throughout the Roman empire. The most dangerous difference was the refusal to serve the gods of the empire in preference to worshiping the one God, which was seen as offensive and irreligious by contemporary people of the day. The first chapter dealt with the hostility early Christians endured during the first centuries and the pagan criticism behind the persecutions, including Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Galen, Marcus Aurelius, Lucian, and Celsus. The author made a very good point at highlighting the economic factors presented by the early Christians who urged others to stop sacrificing and worshipping other gods, which impacted the livelihood of craftsmen and those who raised the animals for sacrifice.

In chapter two, Hurtado explains in depth the differences in what modern people would consider "religion" and its connection to this time period. For the Roman people, religious responsibility was a public service that included reverence and respect to the various gods of the empire, the town, and the family. Even the Roman people's sense of piety and virtue, their idea of prayer, and observances to the gods contrasted with the early Christians, enforcing their outsider status. In chapter three, the idea of religious identity is explored. In the Roman world, one's religious preference was conferred at birth and everyone was presumed to honor the gods as appropriate to their Roman culture and heritage. The Romans enthusiastically embraced the religious cults of other cultures, including Persia and Egypt because they were similar to their own religious beliefs. The problem the Romans had with the Christian religion is that Christians were expected to reject other gods and religious services, which was seen as abhorrent and atheistic.

Chapter three reveals one of the issues that enabled Christianity to persist into the following generations. Christians were prolific in their writing and sharing of their sacred texts. These texts became important and were incorporated into their worship, which was different compared to other religious groups of the day who did not have sacred writings of this nature and used scrolls instead of books to archive and share with others. In Chapter four, the setting of the Roman era is explored. The violent contests, infant exposures, and sexual escapades were acceptable in Roman culture but contrasted greatly with Christian practices of moral behavior.

Destroyer of the Gods is a readable and inspiring discussion about the beginning of Christianity and how it differed from any religious thought before (except for Judaism). The vocabulary and organization created a monograph easy to follow no matter how much knowledge you have about the topic. Hurtado beautifully reveals how these differences subtly become the norm in modern culture and how its roots were formed and flourished against all the odds. As a whole, the text makes a considerable contribution to the understanding of the ancient period between the first and third centuries and delves into a forest of information with an eye for detail and thoughtful interpretation.

View all my reviews

Poem in Your Pocket 2016

Today we celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day, a day when you carry a poem in your pocket and share it with friends, family, strangers, whoever you can find to stand still and listen to your poem. Fortunately, I work at a public residential high school, so I have a captive audience. As a poet and lover of poetry, this is one of my favorite days!

So, what is in my pocket today? Today, I am carrying "Masquerade." Here is a video commemorating the poem:

Digital Scrapbook: Ireland, Wales, and England

 

Last spring break (March 2015), I had the opportunity to travel to Ireland, Wales, and England as a group leader to six teenagers. It was a unique and rewarding experience and one I won't soon forget. When we returned, I spent the next few months working on a digital scrapbook commemorating the trip.

I used Book Creator for iPad, which is one of my favorite apps for creating books outside of iBook Author. In my opinion, the $4.99 price tag for Book Creator is money well spent. I find that I turn to it for projects I want to quickly put together. The app allows you to add audio and video to your book and has a feature that turns your book into a video.

In Ireland, Wales, and England, I documented the daily activities on the tour as well as the sites we visited to create a visual narrative that includes pictures, videos, and short descriptions. The first video (playlist) was created using an iMovie trailer theme:

A few of the videos were created using a variety of video editing apps, including Drop 'N' Roll, Replay, Vont, and Fliptastic. Photographs were edited using the Martha Stewart Craft Studio and Photo Tangler. At some of the sites we visited, I was quite the shutterbug and took an absurd amount of pictures. Instead of having page after page of boring pictures, I turned them into a short video. Here is an example from my visit to the Archaeology and History Museum in Dublin, Ireland:

Mixed with the photographs are screen shots of some of my social media posts from the trip. Modern technology allows for easy communication with people back home. The first time I traveled outside of the country, the Internet was a new thing and mass emails was the easiest way to stay connected. Today with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, staying connected is in real time. I can check-in at Buckingham Palace in London and friends and family back home (if they're awake) know immediately. It was fun to include the posts in the photographic narrative:

Once I had all of the pictures and photographs in place, I was ready to turn the scrapbook into a video. To create a video, click on the share icon and then on "Export as Video," which will save the video to your camera roll.

When the video is uploaded to the camera roll, I then opened it in iMovie and did some more editing to it. One of the main bits of editing I did was to add audio to dull areas in the video. These were mainly the portions of the video that showed photographs lying flat on a page. A great source for free music that can be shared in videos for free can be found at the YouTube Audio Library. They have a variety of different music that can be searched by mood, genre, length, etc. It is a great source if you're on a budget. The video also plays the short videos that were added to the book, but they were small on the screen. In a book, this would not be a problem because a video can easily go to full screen. In the video, however, it was just too small. I simply deleted the sections showing the short videos and inserted the original footage into the timeline, using transitions as a clean segway in between scenes.

I'm still using DVDs for movies so, of course, I had to burn a copy to a DVD and make a matching cover. To burn to a DVD, I used DVD Creator Pro Burn Video ($14.99) for Mac, which is a simple and intuitive software that lets you add background pictures as well as audio. To create the cover and the sticker for the DVD I used Pages. 

Book download

When I began this project, I had no intentions of turning the scrapbook into an .epub that can be viewed on my iPad, but I have changed my mind. Had I originally intended to create an electronic book, I would have created it using iBook Author instead because of the massive size of the files. With iBook Author, you can decrease the size of your book by using the YouTube widget instead of uploading individual videos. On the Book Creator app, the size of my final book is 2530 MB. Crazy, huh? Perhaps one day soon some genius will figure out how to have a media rich book without ending up with an incredibly large file. Until then, I will have to make due with many volumes to the work.

To download a copy of the scrapbook, click on the link to the volume you wish to see. If you are using your iPad, simply click on the "Open in" tab and open the document in iBooks or your favorite .epub reader. If you are on your Mac, click to download the file and save it to your computer. Then click on the file and it will open automatically in iBooks. 

Please note: these files cannot be read on a Kindle. You must either have iBooks or an .epub reader to view.

Vol. 1: The introduction and first two days in Ireland, including a visit to Adare and Killarney.

Vol. 2: Finishes the second day in Ireland and continues into the third day, which includes a tour of the town of Killarney and the beginning of the Ring of Kerry with a stop to see the Atlantic Ocean at Dimple Peninsula.

Vol. 3: Continues along the Ring of Kerry, highlighting the sheepdog demonstration and a stop at Sneem.

Vol. 4: Continues along the Ring of Kerry with stops at the Kerry Bog Village and the Ladies' View.

Vol. 5: Begins day four at Blarney Castle, Cashel Rock, and Dublin.

Vol. 6: Begins day five with a look at St. Patrick's Cathedral (a short book with only 15 pages because of the size of the video of St. Patrick's).

Vol. 7: Finishes day five with an exploration of Dublin, including Trinity College. Day six begins with a ferry ride across the Irish Sea to Wales and the beautiful Beaumaris Castle.

Vol. 8: Begins day seven at Stratford-Upon-Avon (a short book with only 13 pages because of the size of the video of Stratford-Upon-Avon).

Vol. 9: Continues day seven with a stop at Oxford before continuing on to London (another short book with only 11 pages because of the size of the video).

Vol. 10: Finishes day seven in London (small book with 11 pages because of the size of the video).

Vol. 11: The final volume covering day eight with more sites of London (one video removed because it was too long to allow the file to upload from Book Creator). This volume includes Buckingham Palace, a stop in Windsor, and a concluding video.

I hope these volumes leave you inspired and ready to create your own digital scrapbook!

A few months before going to Ireland, Wales, and England, I went to Rome. When I returned, I created a digital scrapbook using iBook Author on my Mac. To check out step-by-step how I created Weekend in Rome, click on this link.

Another way to commemorate a trip or event is to make a memory quilt. You can check out mine at I Tried That Crafter blog.

Review: The Crystal Cave

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart is a narrative focused on Merlin of the King Arthur legend. Stewart delves into the beginning of Merlin's life and follows it to the conception of Arthur. Stewart magically weaves myth and legend into an enchanting story. Merlin's life begins in Wales as a bastard who does not know his father and his mother is the daughter of the king of Wales. His upbringing is as expected for someone who does not know his father and his escape launch Merlin on a path towards his destiny as a well-known wizard. The story is rather slow up to this point, but once Merlin and his father, Ambrosius, return to England, the story begins to soar.

If you enjoy reading stories about King Arthur, this is a nice gem to find. Although the story is not the most extraordinary telling of the legend, it is a good read, especially for younger readers mature enough for dark tales.



View all my reviews

Review: Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale

Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina Warner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once Upon a Time: a Short History of Fairy Tale by Marina Warner is a great introduction to the history of fairy tales. Warner's expertise in the subject is brilliantly laid out in this well-written prose. Warner's wit, readability, and writing style combined with her professional knowledge made Once Upon a Time an enjoyable and thrilling read.

Beginning with the prologue, she gives a brief description of the genre and its characteristics and continues to elaborate on these characteristics in the following chapters. She explores the world of fairies and the cultures that passed these oral stories to the following generations who collect them and write them down. Warner describes with clarity how these stories influenced society and how each generation cultivates them to reflect their beliefs and fears. The discussion of whether these stories were traveling tales or a collective unconscious (chapter three) was the most interesting in my point of view. With oral histories, the difficulty is understanding the origins and the original intent of these stories, and Warner lays out the arguments for all sides beautifully.  Another interesting discussion about the history of fairy tales can be found in chapter seven where Warner analyzes the feminist approach to fairy tales and how they are reinvented to be more modern and acceptable to today's audience.

As a whole Once Upon a Time lives up to expectations as a short and concise study of the subject of fairy tales. It may not be groundbreaking, but it is a great start for anyone interested in fairy tales. If you are an avid reader of fairy tales, this book will enhance your understanding and appreciation of the genre.

View all my reviews