This is a great family activity, and with email and computers, it’s easier than ever to get it all together. Create your own custom family cookbook, complete with you favorites and traditional recipes. All it takes is for one person to get it started and a group of others to help it along. There are a lot of ways to gather the actual recipes:

• Ask everyone to bring one to the next family function (holiday, reunion, birthday, etc.). Do this for the entire year of get-togethers and you will have enough for a full book.
• Use that email! Send a mass email to your family, church group, school network, or any group you are a part of. Ask those people to just type up their favorite recipe or two.
• Make it part of a gift. At the next shower, include the request for recipes in the invitation and let the guests know it will help the guest of honor at the shower make a complete home.
• Potluck with recipe. Host a potluck dinner at your house and let guests know they can bring anything as long as the recipe comes with it.
• Search the record books. My grandma loved to write her own notes about recipes in her cookbooks. I’ve found more than one of her own special recipes tucked in those pages, so search the old recipe books from your ancestors.
• Make it a fundraiser. If you are part of a larger group (like a school or church), make it a fundraising project. Collect from everyone in the group, assemble it, and sell it. People will love to share their family recipes and try new ones.

Plus you can include more than just recipes. If you like, ask each person who submits a recipe to write a little biography about themselves. Or you can include photos or poetry to accompany the recipes. I once saw a cookbook for a school fundraiser that had pictures of the school and the classes throughout the school’s history. It was as fascinating to look at these old faces as it was to make the actual dishes. Once you have the recipes gathered, simply put them into categories (appetizers, sides, main course, etc.). If you have a lot of sections, a table of contents might help people find things easily. This is also your chance to use some fun clip art and fonts to dress up the pages that designate the categories. Once it’s time to print them, you’ll need to think about how many copies you want. If it’s just a few for the family, then binders or report covers might be all the supplies you need. Just print off enough copies for everyone, punch holes in them, and clip into the binder. You may even simply fold and staple the pages so the book is the size of half a sheet of paper. If you want lots of copies or are doing this as a fundraiser, check your local print shop for some ideas. If you have all the pages printed and ready to go, they can offer suggestions for spiral, comb, glued or punched bindings. You can also select thicker paper for the cover. Then you can enjoy your creation and all the recipes contained inside.