The Cookbook

December 30, 2009 – Day 364

About 2 ½ years ago, I decided to type out my favourite recipes so I could pass them down to my children and grandchildren. That was the beginning of a once-in-a-lifetime project and little did I know that it would take me so long to complete! I spent countless hours typing and proofreading my work.

I’ve enjoyed cooking, baking and trying new recipes since I was a teenager so I have accumulated many favourites over the years. Once in a while I would put this project aside because it seemed like an enormous undertaking that may never be finished, or I’d simply lose interest in typing recipes – but I always kept coming back to it because I never lost the desire to pass along a copy of my favourite recipes.

After more than two years, I finally finished typing every single one of my favourite recipes! Once I reached that goal, I decided it would be great to include any others that my kids may wish to include – and I’m glad I asked because a couple of them did have recipes to contribute. Once I added their recipes, I then thought it would be interesting to include favourites from other family members as well, and I began to collect and type up recipes from aunts and cousins.

As I continued to collect recipes from my family members and add new favourites when I would try a new recipe that was fabulous, I realized that this was a project that could very well never have an “end”. So early this year, I set a goal to finish the collection of recipes in time to give to my kids for Christmas gifts this year and that’s what I’ve done.

Although this cookbook is finished, Christine is going to take over and start a new cookbook of our future favourites! I will submit to her any new recipes I try that I would consider a new favourite or any recipes I collect from family members.

I had planned to print a copy of the cookbook for each of my children, put the pages in plastic sleeves and add them to a binder; however, my sister Darlene had a much better idea. She went to Staples not more than a couple weeks before Christmas to see how much it would cost to have the cookbook printed and coil bound. Each was only $32 and change to be printed on cardstock – and could be done in time for Christmas! Darlene ordered four cookbooks for herself and I asked her to order five for me (one for each of my kids and one for myself). It turned out that Staples made an error on the first printing. Instead of printing the heading pages single-sided, they double-sided everything other than the first page of the cookbook. They redid the job as we originally requested it be done and we still had the cookbooks in time for Christmas! My sisters Marilyn and Cathy and my aunt Joan bought the first set of misprinted cookbooks at cost – I guess they didn’t mind some of the headings being on the left hand side of the pages.

Including the index and category heading pages, the cookbook is 271 pages long and is about 1 ¾” thick after being printed and bound. Creating this cookbook truly was a labor of love and feels thrilling to have it done and see it in “print”!