One of the best gifts I ever received was a recipe book from my grandmother containing instructions for how to make all of her favorite and best-loved dishes. I know she spent hours on the book, handwriting every recipe from memory.
Now, there’s a way that grandmothers, moms, amateur chefs and others who love to cook can preserve their favorite recipes and share them with others in just minutes. It’s called TasteBook. All of your favorite recipes are bound into a hardcover book that looks as professional as anything you’d buy at the bookstore, plus you can add your own notes and photos! Don’t have enough of your own recipes to fill out the book? You can search up to 25,000 original recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet. From a quick scan of the site, it appears that your typical TasteBook costs about $35. I’m thinking about making them for birthday and Christmas gifts this year.
Check out TasteBook at www.tastebook.com
We did this for this past Christmas – two years ago my mother began collecting recipes from all the families – including the in-laws – and we compiled them into one big family cookbook. The beginning had a huge family tree, then a history of the family, then a page for each of the children (my dad and his siblings) as well as their spouse, children, grandchilden, etc. Then the recipes contributed with photos and pictures scanned in. It ended up being 150 pages of fabulous memories. I used “booklet” format in Word and bound the books with a wire binder – the cookbooks were less than $10 each (not including our time) and EVERYONE is loving them. We gave a CD of all the photos and the Word file for future generations to add on and make updated books for their children to come. I highly recommend it!!!
I gave them as gifts this Christmas, and they were loved by all!