Once I acquired married, my mother-in-law despatched me a few dozen household recipes, handwritten on index playing cards. The recipes have been as old-school because the gesture: Beef Stew, Hen Cacciatore, Meatloaf, a fruit cobbler that referred to as for margarine…
Although I not often cook dinner that sort of meals anymore, I consider these index playing cards because the type of issues I’ll give to my daughters sometime, on some happy-teary milestone event. The one drawback? I’m not 100% positive the place they’re. Possibly they’re shoved inside that spiral pocket book I made within the 90s, or spilling out of an accordion file with class tabs, or in one of many two or three binders I used to prepare recipes within the prehistoric pre-Pinterest days. Thus, “Discover and Preserve These Index Playing cards” has been on my Without end To-Do Record since 2005.
How do you ensure hand-written household recipes are preserved? Or, relatedly, how do you ensure, say, your grandmother’s legendary minestrone, the one she makes with a little bit little bit of this, a little bit little bit of that — no recipe in sight — is recorded for posterity? When Hawa Hassan and Julia Turshen have been amassing recipes for his or her cookbook, In Bibi’s Kitchen, they describe how the e-book’s photographers typically needed to first video the grandmothers (all from jap African international locations) cooking their dishes, and solely then would Hassan and Turshen watch the footage and do their finest to get the recipe down on paper. It made me assume I ought to do the identical with my very own mom and mother-in-law.
When my husband’s grandmother died over ten years in the past, our Uncle Earl made probably the most stunning tribute album that included a lot of her signature recipes alongside outdated images of her. He needed to scan every photograph and recipe clipping, so it took him some time, however the result’s stunningly private and heirloom-worthy. (He used Apple, which has since stopped printing books, however Shutterfly has equally elegant layouts.) Alternatively, it’d require much less time than rekeying the recipes your self, which you’d probably must do should you went the digital cookbook route. Many photograph web sites, like Blurb, provide layouts particularly designed for recipes. Shutterfly has a recipe e-book choice of their personalized design choices, which I performed round with and feels very person pleasant.
When you’re on the lookout for methods to protect single recipes, you could find tons of of artists on Etsy who use fine-tipped paint brushes to hint and paint authentic handwriting onto a plate or a pie dish. (That is one is from Artwork Smith Studios.) I like this concept, and assume it could make such a lovely reward.