A Family Cookbook for Christmas

Every year at Christmas, people spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours trying to find the perfect gift. We waste so much precious time looking for the right gift that we often end up on Christmas Eve buying whatever is left. These gifts are usually the common ones that everyone receives, thanks you graciously for, and then returns after Christmas. After all, they already have two of them.

So this year for Christmas, start early and create a unique and personal Christmas gift for the adults in your family. I'm talking about parents, adult siblings, nieces, aunts, nephews, uncles, cousins, and children. You can even send this gift to some of your friends. What is this fantastic gift? It's a family cookbook. However, I must warn you, it does take some time to organize and publish this gift. But it is well worth it when you see the look of delight on the faces of all your family and friends. And the time you don't have to spend shopping for those hard to please people will be ample time to create this cookbook.

So where do you start? For a cookbook you need recipes, right? And, since it's going to be a family cookbook, you need recipes from your family. Call, write, email, or phone everyone you can think of, even the guys, and ask for their favorite recipes. You need to do this as early as you can. The sooner you have the recipes, the sooner you can get the book done. You may be surprised at some of the recipes you get back. I received a couple of joke recipes, which I published along with the real recipes. If you don't get a very good response, pester them a little. Make up some tale about your kid needs some for school. Ask people to send several and for different menu items, for example, desserts, main dishes, casseroles, and breads. The ideal thing is to get two or more recipes for the same thing.

Now, there are two ways you can do this. One, if you really don't have a lot of time, you can take the recipes to a printing shop and let them put the cookbook together. This will cost much more than the second way. Which is, do it yourself. It's really not that hard. It's actually fun. I'm just going to assume you want to do it yourself.

You will need a cover page. You can make this page as simple or as elaborate as you like. You can put a picture of your grandparents, or your home, or anything on the front. I put our family's coat of arms on the front of mine beneath the name. The name should be printed in large, bold letters, such as "The Smith Family Cookbook" in whatever font and color you want. Another nice touch is to put the year at the bottom. The same goes with the back page. I actually found a history of our family name and printed it on the back page. A standard sheet of paper turned sideways can make the front and back page. These two pages need to be laminated. For the inside of the book, I used the thicker, construction type paper. It is more durable than regular paper. The recipes should be sorted according to the type, desserts, main dishes, etc.

Some other things to include in the book are an inside cover page, the table of contents, and in the back, an index for a quick reference. Another good tip is to make a calendar of birthdays. Be sure to leave some empty spaces for new names. To finish the book, punch holes in the edges for a binder and put it together. I would advise make some extra ones because they also make great birthday and wedding gifts.