Task 64 - Create a Cookbook

While working on my family tree and attempting to compile some family history I knew I wasn’t capturing everything. There is always more to a person than the history books and records can collect. They don’t capture the essence or the personality of a person. Those details are often hard to remember and often forgotten from generation to generation. Sometimes the greatest gifts a person has isn’t something that is recognized as an inheritance because it isn’t monetary. I struggled for a way to try and piece some of those details together but the idea struck me as I sat down for dinner at my parents. 

My mom had made her amazingly delicious corn pudding. While it isn’t a fancy dish it is always included in every holiday meal or special event. I know I had asked my mother before for the recipe but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered its origin.

She hadn’t dreamed it up or adapted it from a cookbook as I had expected. Instead I learned that it was a side dish her mother had always made for her. While my grandmother passed away when I was only four and I don’t remember her I came to the realization that a little piece of her personality and spirit is on the table each and every time my mom makes that dish.

It was then I realized that like my mother I too had memories of meals that she made for me. Those meals where made with love and she has spent countless hours nurturing my body and mind with those delicious dished. 

I decided that before it was too late and those meals were lost or forgotten I would collect and combine those recipes into a family cookbook. I asked my mom for both of my grandmother’s cookbooks and learned that they too had written down recipes from past generations. 

I have digitized and printed a copy for myself, my mother, and my brother so that they those recipes will live on for more generations to come. Rather than have it bound I opted to go with 3 ring binders so that recipe’s can be added.