Cookbooks of Meaning

I don't know about you, but the holidays did me in when it came to meal prep and cooking. With all the family meals between Christmas and New Years, I've been struggling to keep up and have food in the house since then! While I doubt that I'm still in a food coma, I am still struggling to get back into the swing of things. So I thought I'd share a special project that I did for the holiday that is near and dear to my heart.

Like many people, my grandmother was a huge influence in the kitchen to my mother, and also to me. She is the one that always made an incredible Christmas dinner. I will never forget the days of applesauce-making, corn-peeling, ice-cream making, pie-baking, and hours and hours in the kitchen. My mother inherited her skills, passion for cooking and the ability to feed an army when it's just our small family (literally!), and I'd like to think I inherited most of these qualities from my mom. My mom has made so many of her recipes over the years that we've loved and I brought with me and am now sharing with my husband and his family.

Now that my grandma is gone, my mom had her recipe boxes and access to the Mennonite Community Cookbook she often used. For Christmas, which my mom was hosting this year, she wanted to honor my grandma by compiling some of her best known recipes and distribute to the family for their keeping. 

It started out as a word document, just typing up all the recipe cards that my mom picked out. I also typed out the recipes from the Mennonite Community Cookbook and labeled the source. But I didn't want this to just be a binder of paper. I wanted it to be durable and special to last generations. So I took it upon myself to surprise my mom and get the recipes made into a cookbook.


I searched online for how to make your own cookbook and came across the website Heritage Cookbook. From the research I did, it had some of the cheapest prices per page, and the ones displayed on their website looked amazing! The only downside to deciding to do this so late was that I had to copy and paste all the recipes from the Word document into the website 1 by 1. If I knew I was doing this from the beginning, I would have avoided the copy-and-paste step completely. 

There were many covers to choose from, but none that caught my eye to represent my grandma. So a great aspect of this website is that you can make your own on this website. So I googled some cookbook covers and found a fun, but symbolic cover and was able to edit it in Word and on their website. I'd say the cover was the hardest part to do, but was worth it.

The last step I did to make it more personable was to scan some pictures of grandma, grandpa and the family to add throughout the cookbook. To me, this made it something to be passed down to my kids so they can see their grandparents (my mother) with the family.    

My mom didn't know I was doing this special cookbook until she opened them on Christmas. She only knew I'd have them ready to hand out to the family. This was not only a gift from my mom to the family, but from me to myself so that I will have a special book to continue the traditional family food for generations. And it's already got some grease stains on the cookie pages from my big cookie extravaganza! 

My prayer is that I can bless my family with the food God continues to provide just as my grandma showed her love by providing for her family. I hope if this is something you can do with recipes from a loved one, that you enjoy it and can honor a family or friend by doing this for them, too.