On My Summer Vacation, I Wrote A Cookbook or Two, or Three.
I hadn’t planned to take an extended vacation from blogging and it seems like it was only a month, but it was January, January for heaven’s sake. But life gets bumpy and there were two weddings and a funeral.
For the upcoming weddings, I had decided to write a family heritage cookbook. It sounds “cooler” than it was, but still, it was pretty cool.
Gathering recipes from three families and putting them into a modern cookbook was fun and interesting. Designing the cover, learning the nuances of the software, and finding help with the editing wasn’t as much fun but the finished product was well worth it.
I chose to work with “Create My Cookbook” because of the ease of their program. I was super happy with the finished product. I wished that I could have figured out how to use my own photos on the cover and in the future, I want to change the photos but I spent a ridiculous amount of time on that subject and simply had to move on. Shout out to my Alyssa Harms for her skills on that cover!
Not a graphic designer, an editor, nor a very good writer, I was successful in so many other ways. For example, I had always wanted to make a pretty cake. So, I used a recipe from my niece’s grandmother, watched a bunch of YouTube, shopped on Amazon for cake decorating tools, and the result was this delicious number.
Grandmother Coleen’s Famous Carrot Cake
Grandma Colleen’s Carrot Cake
I learned more about heritage and regional recipes such as making a different Tortiere recipe from her Quebec family line.
Tourtiere
Or, paczki’s from her Polish heritage made every year by her father and two uncles.
Paczki photo thanks to Jeanne Suminski
I learned that when your niece marries a Kearney, you dig through your Ireland photos looking for Kate Kearney’s Cottage and Kearney’s Castle.
Not realizing how important this photo of Grandpa would be by the end of this summer month.
Preserving handwritten recipes, photos, and stories became a labor of love, a gift from the heart, and a new realization of traditions.
Meg
kickingthebucketlistwithmeg.wordpress.com 