How to Make a Mother's Day Cookbook

Mother's Day began as an official American holiday in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday in May the day to honor mothers. What better way to celebrate Mother's Day than by compiling all your family's favorite recipes in a special souvenir cookbook and giving it to your mom as a celebration of her prowess in the kitchen and of the family's memories of great times and bonding around the kitchen table.

Instructions

1. What you will want for your Mother's Day cookbook are recipes that have stories and memories attached to them. Cast your mind back and try to remember what your mother cooked on special occasions and any memories that connect particular meals to family events or incidents. Ask siblings, your extended families and your mother's close friends to do the same.

2. Start collecting the recipes. Be sure to look out for handwritten recipes that can be reprinted in the book as illustrations. Find and collect photos of friends and family, and of family occasions, with which to illustrate the recipe pages and the stories associated with them.

3. When you visit your mother, check out her bookshelf. Look at her cookbooks for signs that particular recipes have been used a lot--the soiled and earmarked pages. If you find recipes cut out from magazines and newspapers, or in handwritten note, be sure to include them.

4. Think about restaurants where you and your family have had a special meal with your mother. Get in touch with the restaurant and ask them for the recipe.

5. Sort all your recipes into categories--appetizers, salads, side dishes, meat, fish, poultry, pasta and desserts. Make recipe selections based on what you need in each category and, more importantly, for the family stories that are associated with them. Recipe collection programs at sites such as Cook's Palate, Living Cookbook and Accu Chef can be used to help you organize (links are provided in the Resources box).

6. Try to unify the measurements used throughout the cookbook. You can list measurements as either weights or by cup, perhaps even both, just make sure it's consistent throughout.

7. If a sibling or friend remembers a particular favorite meal but doesn't have the recipe, look it up in cookbooks or on the Internet so you can include it.

8. Don't forget to include grandchildren and young nieces and nephews in the project. Use their drawings to decorate the pages, especially those in the dessert section.

9. When you lay out your pages, start with the anecdote or memory that makes that particular recipe special--the meal she cooked when a special guest arrived, when she celebrated your 21st birthday or the day she dropped the roast when she was putting it into the oven and the family dog ran away with it.

10. Decide how you're going to present your Mother's Day cookbook. You can type the pages yourself, decorate them with photos and drawings, and simply punch holes and bind them in a pretty 3-ring binder. Or you may decide to go for a more professional production with multiple copies you can give as gifts to friends and family. There's a wide range of software available to help you do this on your own - InDesign and Quark, or the simpler Microsoft Publisher--or you can seek out a professional short-run publisher. An Internet search for "Cookbook Publishers" or "Self Publishing" will turn up many firms for you to contact.

11. It will take some planning and work to make your Mother's Day cookbook, but while you're toiling at it, just remember that it will be a prized family treasure and an everlasting reminder of how food and love keeps your family together.

Tips & Warnings

• If you're binding the book yourself, you may want to cover the pages with clear contact paper so that it won't get dirty in the kitchen.

• Take good care of the cookbook so it may be passed down from generation to generation.

Resources

• Cooks Palate
• Living Cookbook
• Accu Chef