how to preserve family recipes – For Dragonflies And Me

Many of us have special recipes that have been handed down through our families for years. I count them extra special if they’re hand written by deceased loved ones, like my grandma… I had several of hers and I’d always wanted to keep them safe for my daughter and Lord willing daughter-in-laws.

Several years ago I was going through one of my Scrapbook magazines and they had a whole section on Scrap-Cookbook Journal’s. Well that’s all it took for me and I was right into it. I called my mom, Neil’s mom and sisters and got all the families ‘favorites’. One stipulation was they had to send the recipes in their own handwriting.

I had several of my Grandmas, her sisters, my aunts, my moms as well as some that I’d written as a teenager. I also included some of Neil’s concoctions along with his brothers.

But I needed more than just the recipes- I needed photographs. I wanted photographs preferably of each person in the kitchen or doing something in the line of cooking- even camping and grilling. I got more than I dreamed of, this was going to be fun.

One other key ingredient was to be the story telling aspect of it… the journaling! This comes easy for me, so with each recipe and photo is a short story about the cook and why the recipe is special.

Now to get it organized and decide on the format.

Once I had the recipes I made copies of them on archival scrapbook paper so they wouldn’t deteriorate over time.

I put appropriate photos with the right recipes. In the garden for veggies, making pretzels and bread for that category and like wise.

I decided on my title pages and the order they would go in. I used stickers, die cuts and photo copied cute pictures for my title pages.

Realizing that this couldn’t be an encyclopedia I had to decide on what recipes to use and which to scrap- (get rid of) -no pun intended- this was the hard job. I tried to put at least one recipe from each family member so Taylor would have a memory of each person.