Ways of Preserving Family Recipes
(435 Words)
They are the recipes that were passed down from your grandmother, which were passed down from hers. You want them preserved for all time, and there are many different ways to do so. Try the following tactics to safeguard these gems.
Make a family cookbook
A family cookbook is a wonderful way to make a practical resource for yourself and save your recipes. Decide which recipes you want to include. You can make this book yourself by writing them out or by typing them in a word processing program and printing them out. You can put them in a three ring binder or some sort of report cover, many versions of which are available at office supply stores. If you want to make something more substantial, you can also pay to have a book made. Many photo labs such as Costco and Snapfish will make professional books. Instead of photographs you can put in recipes. You will find many other companies that can make such books.
Make sure that you store these in a safe place. You may want to make several copies so that if one gets lost or ruined, you will still have another.
Use a computer program to input, store and organize them
You can store your family recipes on the computer. This is useful because it can make it easy to organize them. You can also easily back them up on CDs, which you can then store in different locations. Try to put it somewhere outside of your house as well so that if something were to happen to your home such as a fire, the recipes would not be lost. There are many online sources where you can do this or you can purchase software such as Cookbook 2011 and Home – Recipe Organizer and Grocery Shopping Manager for Windows and Mac, both available from www.amazon.com. Of course you can also just type them into a word processing program and save them as a file on your computer.
Share them
The more people who have the family recipes, the less likely they will get lost or forgotten. Share them with others in the family. Ask that they share theirs with you. When you make a family cookbook, make copies for everyone in the family. E-mail the recipes to people.
You can also share them with the world if you would like. You can load your recipes onto a website such as www.allrecipes.com. This will allow others to read them.
It is important to preserve family recipes for generations to come. The above methods can allow you to save these family treasures.