Stir Family Recipes, Stories, Photos into a Book. Serve with Joy.

My mother collected recipes. Recipes she made, she inherited, she saved “just in case.” When she passed away last year, I inherited her recipe boxes, beautifully organized with recipes I’ve loved since childhood and ones I’ll never make, like my great-grandmother’s steamed suet pudding.

Many of us inherit a family recipe collection. What an opportunity! Your recipe collection is a great way to save and share favorite family recipes with family stories and photos. Like these books created by our clients, Liz and Anita:

Liz used her recipes to create a book for her sons, who kept calling to ask, “Mom, how do I make…?”

In it, she shares recipes along with photos – of her family’s farmhouse, table settings with heirloom china, of her childhood (from slides), and of family gatherings and pets.

The book closes with a short, written piece, “Of Food and Family”, about Liz’s rural Pennsylvania childhood memories of milk, egg, and bread deliveries – something totally unfamiliar to her children and grandchildren but an important piece of her life story.

Anita’s mother was well known as the preeminent cook and hostess in her hometown. Like her mother, sharing Southern hospitality is important to Anita, as is preserving her mother’s memory. In Anita’s book, she tells delightful snippets of her mother’s life story along with coveted recipes in her mother’s handwriting, including her famous Red Velvet cake, a recipe “well-worn and well-loved”. Anita closes the book with this wish: “I hope Mother’s recipes and cooking, her legacy, will be passed on from generation to generation.”

If you are fortunate to have family recipes and stories, please save and share the memories and legacy. Recipes give current and future generations a direct (and mostly delicious) path to their family history and to their stomachs.

Family recipe books don’t have to be hard to create – you’ve got us! They just need intention, mixed with love, flavored with charm, stirred and baked, then served with joy.

Bon Appetit!