I finally finished a little fun project I have been working on all year. I made my own cookbook. I decided, earlier this year, that I needed a little boost to get out of a cooking rut I was in. I knew what I needed was a project that would help my organize and simplify my recipes. I decided to collect my family favorite recipes and consolidate them into a cookbook that I would really use...not like those cookbooks that I buy that have one or two or three good recipes in them, but a cookbook where I would use ALL the recipes often.
How many times can I type the word cookbook?
Anyways, I knew that when it comes to me and projects and being the mother of five children, I have to break everything down into little steps. First I organized my recipe binder nicely. I took out recipes that I would never make and marked the one I knew already were going to make the cut into the book.
Then I slowly but surely started trying some new things. This is what really got me out of that rut...I was making the same things over and over and I knew I wanted a nice collection of 100+ recipes, and I only had a little more than half of that of die-hard favorites so far. I found recipes through friends, family, blogs, and books and recipe site. I experimented on my children and if the recipe was a majority-rules good one, I would make adjustments (more sauce, a little less spicy etc) to make it our own. If one didn't work out, I pitched the recipe and tried something new. We mixed things up and tried things again and again. I have to say-it was fun!
Once I felt like I was ready, I opened a
Blurb account (I chose this company to make the cookbook just because I heard they did a very nice job with the photo aspect and made it all easy-there are probably many good choices out there I am sure) and watched one quick tutorial on how to make a book. I looked at some samples of recipe books already made and decided, of course, I wanted it to be very simple with full page pictures. I downloaded the software and went to work, slowly but surely, entering recipes a little at a time...remember I just finished this and I started it in the beginning of the year.
They have easy recipe templates. Lots of choices of course, but I don't like lots of choices so I kept my blinders on and just went with the easy and quick templates. I did have some food photos, and I had planned to have one for each recipe, but I decided that was just too time-consuming so I used some of my favorite family pictures throughout. For the cover and the divider pages, I made a quick collage in Picasa and used that as my image. I proofread, hit send, and chose what type of cover I wanted before ordering. I would have loved to have a jacket, but I think for a cookbook that I'd be using everyday, I would have just ended up removing it anyways.
I exchanged this sloppy mess:
For this:
I was so excited when I got the email that it shipped that I stood outside waiting for 2 days and nights till it was delivered. Not really but I wanted to. I love it.
(get it?)
The one drawback is that it is not super cheap...the cost depends on how many pages and what sort of cover you choose. My book was around $65 I think-I used a coupon I found online. To me it is worth every penny because I have a scrapbook type of cookbook that will be a family treasure.
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