Inexpensive, Homemade Holiday Gift Idea: Cookbook of Your Favorite Recipes

The economy is bad and pennies are being pinched extra tight, but you probably still want to spread some holiday cheer and hand out a present or two.

One way to give and give good is to make your own cookbook: This is a perfect gift for people who love to cook, by people who love to cook.

My husband and I received a book of recipe from his parents one year. They put a lot of favorite recipes in it, and placed it in a basket that included a few ingredients - such as pasta sauce, pasta, Parmesan cheese - to get us cooking.

Hubby's parents are awesome cooks so we knew we'd have tried-and-true recipes on hand and had a lot of fun preparing a number of the dishes. We received the cookbook a couple Christmases ago and still use it. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving.

If you have some favorite recipes on hand, whether they are yours, family favorites, or something out of a cookbook or magazine, collect them. Type them in, copy and paste, whatever your style. Most of us have some kind of word processing program or design option on the computer. Use Word or Works or whatever program you have and snazz up the pages.

If you wish, add a picture of the dish or of the ingredients, play with the fonts, lines and shadings. Just make sure it's readable (no odd fading or anything).

Add a little background to each recipe to make it extra special: "This came from Grandma Jones." "Aunt Judy used to make this every Thanksgiving." "I swear by this chicken soup recipe when I'm feeling under the weather."

Or, add little tidbits and factoids for flavor. Have a great ginger cookie recipe? How about adding that ginger is good for nausea and motion sickness?

You can make it even more personal by writing the introduction to your gift cookbook, if you're into that sort of thing.

The sky's the limit. Then just print the sheets out on your printer, or take copies on disk to a Kinko's or somewhere similar and have them print multiples on preferred paper.

Put it all in a binder of your choosing and wrap it up and go. And if you want to add a bit of something extra, you can always include a couple ingredients: If you have a great risotto recipe, arborio rice and saffron would be nice touches.

The sky's the limit on this type of gift. But the most you'll be spending to put this one together is time and love.

And those are precious gifts indeed.