Family Cookbook Update

Okay, I just got my printed copies of my family cookbook that I discussed in Week 6. It turned out Amazing!! Thank you Blurb.com!

Once I had completed all my photo edits and inputting the cookbook recipes, I just had my boyfriend proof read it (Thanks Scott!), and I submitted it for print. Pretty simple. The books arrived all individually wrapped in plastic for protection. I chose hard cover with a cover wrap so I could add additional photos. I also ordered premium paper for the book for a few dollars more per book. My cookbook was 62 pages and each book was under $30 each for the 6 I ordered. So, Blurb.com really did a good job and the print quality was really nice. I am really pleased and my family will love this special holiday gift.

Week 6: Family Cookbook

It is the beginning of November and the holidays seem just around the corner. I have begun to think about Christmas gifts for my family. I know it may be early, but all my family lives back in the mid-west and I have to ship everything to them, which takes a week and I don’t want to pay a fortune in shipping costs. So, that means I need to be done with shopping, wrapping, and ready to ship by the first week in December or so! That is a month out!!

I mentioned I wanted to give some holiday gift ideas and some of the homemade jams and quick breads are great for local gifts. But what about something special for my parents that really have everything they need or will buy whatever they need throughout the year? An idea struck me! I come from an Italian family on my mother’s side and a German family on my father’s side. (Interesting household & combo!!) The Italian side is very animated and loud talkers, the German side is quiet and reserved, but it seems to have worked out pretty well with my parents celebrating their 40th year wedding anniversary this year!! The one thing that both sides of the family have in common is the love of cooking and great food! (Thank God, my youngest brother became a chef!)

So, with all that said, what about a family cookbook? I have seen cookbooks sold at school fund raisers or my parent’s church produced a cookbook. I thought this would be the perfect gift for my parents, brother, cousins, and hey even myself. So off I was to find a software program or web site to set up the cookbook. Now the challenge began. There are a ton a website out there that will produce 1,000 cookbooks for you! I didn’t want that, I want to make maybe 5 cookbooks! Finding a site that would do small production for a reasonable costs, under $50 or so was the harder part. This is the criteria I was looking for in a web site for producing my cookbook:

• Free software


• No minimum quantities of books, I only need a few


• Economical, it depends on how big your book is, but between $20 to $50 would be reasonable


• Template application that would be easy to edit and put in photos
  Not just a simple plastic spiral bound cookbook. I wanted something a little nicer and classier.


• Production time relatively short, under 2 weeks to produce. (Hey, I have a month to get this done!)
  

Well after testing a few free software programs and trying out their format and templates, I found a site that so far is working out great. I am about half way through inputting all my recipes, so I have not gone through the production process yet or seen the final product. I will Blog about the end result in a few weeks! So the site I chose was... http://www.blurb.com/

Check them out. They have templates for cookbooks, photos books, wedding books, poetry, etc. and there are different size formats you can choose for your book. You can sign up for free and download their software program for PC or Mac for free. The software is called, Booksmart and is pretty easy to use. I am not much for reading instructions or taking a tutorial and you can pretty much just cut and paste your text into the template. There is flexibility to change the book pages, add photos, change the style on each page, and just be creative. It is a bit like scrap booking, but digital.

Here are a few things I would recommend to start your family cookbook.

• Put all your recipes in a digital format. I set up separate Word files for each section of my cookbook so it would be easy to just copy and past my text into the software.


• Scan any recipes you are not going to type in and put them in a .jpg format. You can insert them as a photo in the cookbook.


• Sort through any photos you want to include in the cookbook. These can be uploaded easily in the software and inserted into your cookbook. Make sure your resolution is medium to high, since it will be printed. I tried to use some ClipArt and the software told me it was too low of a resolution to use and look good.


• Input all your recipes first and then work on the color templates, background colors, etc. I found myself playing with this and not getting the cookbook together. Get the whole thing done and then pick your color theme and even insert your photos at the end.

That’s really it! It takes time to copy and paste the data, but I think the book is going to look beautiful and will be a special treat for my family at Christmas. Good luck, have fun, and enjoy. Let me know how your cookbook comes out. I would love to hear any stories or share some special recipes you found. I am excited to share my Grandma Zita’s recipe from probably the 1940's Hunting & Fishing’s Cookbook, Squirrel with Dumplings. Now that's Hillbilly!

Week 5: Pumpkin Bread

Well, fall has arrived, well barely in Los Angeles, it is going to be 90 degrees today! But I grew up in the mid-west and loved fall, the change in seasons, falling leaves, hot food, and stews. I also LOVE pumpkin! I can’t wait for this time of year to try all kinds of great pumpkin recipes. I have experimented with all kinds of varieties of pumpkin and each is so different and great. Below is my current list of pumpkin cookbooks I recommend and try a few new things each year. The first two cookbooks have a good amount of photos, I love photos in cookbooks! I want to see what my food should look like when it is done!

• The Pumpkin Cookbook, Hamlyn


• Pumpkin, Joanna Farrow


• Pumpkin, A Super Food for All 12 Months of the Year, DeeDee Stovel

I do have a funny story about a pumpkin and raisin cheesecake that I made one year for Thanksgiving. My boyfriend and I were spending Thanksgiving at his grandparent’s house one year and I decided I was going to make this really interesting pumpkin cheesecake and I was going to buy "pumpkin in a can", but decided to cook a fresh pumpkin from scratch. I am not sure what pumpkin I chose, but the pumpkin flesh was soooo bright orange that my cheesecake was nuclear orange, not your traditional brown looking pumpkin pie. The taste was great, but the looks I got from the family were interesting and people were too scared to try it. More for me! So I am back to canned pumpkin, easy, hastle free, and the taste is fine. Here is a recipe I developed since there are hundreds of variations of pumpkin quick bread. I wanted to share this recipe since it is truly the best quick bread I have ever had.

Pumpkin Bread:

Sift together:

• 2 cups white flour


• 1 1/3 cup almond meal (Trader Joe’s has an affordable house brand)


• 3 cups sugar


• 2 teaspoons baking soda


• 1 ½ teaspoons salt


• 3 teaspoons cinnamon (I go heavy on this)


• 3 teaspoons nutmeg (I also go heavy on this spice too)


• ½ teaspoon ginger
  

Mix together:

• 1 cup vegetable oil (Try some other oils for extra flavor like Walnut oil)


• 4 eggs slightly beaten


• 2/3 cup water


• 2 cups canned pumpkin
  

Special items needed: Almond Meal and Walnut Oil if wanted

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Step 2: Sift together all the dry ingredients. If you do not have almond meal, you can use all white flour or whole wheat. I found that the almond meal really adds extra flavor and moisture to this bread.

Step 3: Mix together the wet ingredients. I bought some Walnut oil to try a little nuttier flavor to the bread. Canola oil, veggie oil, whatever you have should work fine. You are putting in a cup of this stuff, so this is not a "low cal recipe", but it tastes good.

Step 4: Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until mixed. Pour into 3 average sized greased and floured loaf pans or what I like to do for the holidays is to buy some of the small disposable metal pans to give as gifts. Fill about 3/4 full so there is some room to let the bread rise some. If you grease them with oil first and shake around some flour in the pan to over the oil, it is easier to get the bread out later.

Step 5: Bake for about 50 minutes to 1 hour or until the toothpick comes out clean. Cool for about 5 minutes and then turn out on a rack to cool completely. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or freeze since this will make 3 loaves. Calories per slice is about 123 calories with just flour and 134 calories with the almond meal, each loaf yields 12 slices.

This is the best quick bread I have ever made and I love quick bread!! You can use muffin tins if you wish. I found this is a great gift for the holidays and you can make them up ahead of time. Have fun, Happy Halloween, and enjoy!