The kitchen journal
Notes on keeping recipes
Ideas for preserving family food, giving cookbooks as gifts, and getting your recipes out of the group chat.
How-to
How to make a cookbook from handwritten recipes
Photograph every card, type each recipe in the cook's words, keep the card images, sort the sheets behind tabs and print a binder to add to.
How-to
How to organize recipes in a binder: categories and tabs that work
Pick tabs that match how you look for a recipe, keep one recipe per sheet, add a contents page and a To try tab. Five ready-made sets of categories.
How-to
How to write a recipe anyone can follow (format and template)
The standard recipe format, part by part: title, servings, ingredients in order of use, numbered steps with doneness cues, notes. With a template.
Ideas
A Christmas cookie recipe binder: collect the family's cookies in one place
Collect every relative's Christmas cookie recipe into one binder before December: who to ask, what to write down, tabs that work, a baking plan.
Printing guide
Printing a Family Cookbook: A Printer-Ready Workflow
Check the PDF, ask the printer the right questions, choose paper and punching for a ring binder, and proof one copy before you print the family's.
Worksheet
Family Recipe Interview Worksheet: Questions Worth Asking
30 questions to ask a parent or grandparent about a family recipe: where it came from, real measurements, how they know it's done, and the story.
Preservation
Digitizing Recipe Cards Without Losing the Originals
How to scan or photograph recipe cards front and back, name the files, type each recipe in two passes and keep the paper originals safe.
Gift checklist
Personalized Recipe Book Gift Checklist
A checklist for a personalized recipe book gift: who it is for, which recipes, permissions, the cover label, a schedule that leaves time to print.
Gift ideas
The Mother's Day Cookbook: What to Put Inside and How to Plan It
Ten recipes to put in a Mother's Day cookbook, how to get the family to add a note each, and a weekend plan from the first text to the PDF.
Preservation
What to do with old recipe cards (before they fade)
A one-weekend plan for a box of old recipe cards: sort into four piles, photograph front and back, type the keepers, and store the originals safely.
Ideas
10 Family Cookbook Theme Ideas
Ten family cookbook themes, from the grandmother book to the holiday binder, with chapter tabs for each and title ideas that fit on a cover label.
Roundup
The best online cookbook creators (an honest roundup)
We publish one of these tools. This dated roundup compares official public information from three other cookbook services.
How-to
How to Make a Family Cookbook: A Practical Method
Pick the recipes, gather the cards, sort them behind tabs and print an A5 PDF. A step-by-step plan for a family cookbook you can start free.
Preservation
How to preserve your grandmother's recipes before they're gone
How to save your grandmother's recipes while she can still answer questions: cook with her, measure the pinches, keep her words and her handwriting.
Gift ideas
A personalized recipe book made from shared recipes
How to make a recipe book as a gift: which recipes to gather, a timeline that works before Christmas, and a plan B if you run out of time.
How-to
Getting your recipes out of the Notes app
Recipes scattered across the Notes app, screenshots and the family group chat? Round them up in one sitting and type each one once, into one binder.
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