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.