Meals and Memories: How To Create Keepsake Cookbooks [Paperback]

Kathy Steligo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 1999

If you're passionate about food, want to preserve your culinary heritage, or have ever dreamed of writing your own cookbook, Meals and Memories: How To Create Keepsakes will show you how to create the most unique cookbook in your kitchen. Providing information not found anywhere else, each chapter of this intriguing guide explains and encourages, then summarizes with a step-by-step checklist. The light-hearted, easy-to-understand text is served up with a generous helping of suggestions and tips for recipe style, page layout, and how to write stories and memories about your favorite recipes (we've even included tips for getting over "writer's block"). More than 50 illustrations and examples help you along the way. You even get 31 wonderful recipes. Looking for ways to leverage your fundraising profits? Do your organization a favor and read this book first!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In all my years in the cookbook business, I have never seen a book like this. I cannot think of a better resource than this unique and superbly-illustrated book for creating a lasting family memento." -- Perry Berman, Books-for-Cooks.com

About the Author

Kathy Steligo has been cooking, developing her own recipes, and writing for more than 30 years. Her freelance work has appeared in a variety of newspapers and national magazines, including American Brewer, American Motorcyclist, Business Start-Ups, Chile Pepper, Culinary Trends, E the Environmental Magazine, Traditional Quiltworks, and Wildlife Conservation. She also conducts Create-A-Cookbook seminars for children, adults, and seniors.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Carlo Press; 1St Edition edition (March 20, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966979907
• ISBN-13: 978-0966979909
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Logical, easy introduction to making your own cookbooks, March 25, 2004

By 

A. Ryan "Merribelle" (Westminster, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Meals and Memories: How To Create Keepsake Cookbooks (Paperback)

At one time or another I would look at the jumble of cookbooks and collected recipe cards in my kitchen cabinet and think that there must be a better way to organize those recipes. Something to gather them all in one place, ordered and protected, within easy reach. A family cookbook perhaps? Meals and Memories: How to Create Keepsake Cookbooks answered my need and gave me a few new ideas for wonderful keepsake cookbooks.

Author Kathy Steligo really leads the reader by the hand through basic steps to collecting, organizing and designing keepsake cookbooks. Before you start on your treasury of recipes, there are many points to consider depending on what the purpose of your keepsake cookbook will be, or really who will be the main user(s). If you're like me, you wouldn't have thought ahead about the differences between a cookbook for your own home and one destined to be reproduced for a fundraiser, for instance. When do you most need page protectors, and which type of binding system is best for personal gifts? Is it better to handwrite or use computer journaling? How could you include the original recipe cards on your pages? Never here, the solutions are in here.

Now a caution to all you scrapbookers: this book is focused more on the organizational, practical issues about preserving favorite recipes. You don't consult it for cute page ideas about recipes in your scrapbook layouts, you read it to find out how to make a complete, working volume for use in the kitchen. Sure there are some tips on decorating and design, references to other books and resources to teach you further about design and journaling, even an introduction to archival preservation basics and techniques, but that's not the main point here. This is a no-nonsense guide to getting it all done in a simple, orderly fashion that leaves plenty of room for personalization and artistic flair, but at your own discretion.

All that being said, I learned a lot about keepsake recipes and even came away with inspiration for how to do my own collected recipes books for family gifts. If you are serious about preserving this part of your family heritage, or just want to remember good times with friends and food, this is the ideal introduction to the topic.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how to create a family/genealogical cookbook, May 14, 1999

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Meals and Memories: How To Create Keepsake Cookbooks (Paperback)

Meals and Memories: How to Create Keepsake Cookbooks by Kathy Steligo. Carlo Press, San Carlos, CA. 1999. 112 pp. $18.95 trade paper; 8-1/22 x 112. illustrations; resources; glossary; index.

An ideal book to tie in with the current rise in the interest in genealogy. In a user-friendly format covering all of the basic considerations in a simplified, orderly way, Steligo tells you how to begin and to expand a family cookbook. The formatting includes visuals incorporating recipes, sample mementos, food lore, and drawings which not only illustrate the guidance and tips, but also give ideas for your own cookbook.

Beginning with selecting a theme (e. g., desserts, camping, Christmas), tone, and style for the cookbook, the author takes you through collecting and formatting the recipes which are the basis of the book; and then putting these together and adding memories and anecdotes from different individuals, colors or borders for the page, visual elements (including perhaps photographs), and a cover to make the book distinctive and especially appreciated by family members.

One example of a special touch Steligo uses is a picture of an uncle with a caption in italics noting his love for growing tomatoes with one of his tips on growing them. In one section, she suggests how children can become involved in creating a keepsake cookbook--what better way to have them enjoyably learn about their heritage? Steligo ends her timely, instructive guide with advice on how a 3community2 cookbook resembling a family keepsake cookbook can be used as a fundraiser for a church, school, team, or other organization.

Henry Berry, Book Reviewer

Editor/Publisher, The Small Press Book Review

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An invaluable reference., August 26, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Meals and Memories: How To Create Keepsake Cookbooks (Paperback)

Once you decide to go ahead and begin a project like compiling your family's unorganized recipe collection, it's hard to know where to start first. Kathy takes all the guesswork out of figuring out layout and design, and with more than 50 illustrations, examples, and samples, you're sure to find one that appeals to you. You'll then be on your way to creating a family masterpiece. If you're serious about undertaking a project like this, I highly recommend How to Create Keepsake Cookbooks, it's an invaluable reference you'll turn to again and again.

Rachel Paxton, Creative Homemaking