The community at Family Recipe Central is what sets us apart.
Much more than just another recipe web site, it's the community here at Family Recipe Central that truly sets us apart. We mean the community of family. And the community of friends.
A cherished tradition world wide, the family collection of recipes handed down from generation to generation is a universal social custom near and dear to all of our hearts.
Nothing brings warm feelings of nurturing and comfort to mind faster than the thought of Mom's home cooking (or maybe Dad's). OK, maybe your Mom isn't always the greatest cook (hey, we can't all be this fortunate), but perhaps it's that holiday meal over at Aunt Bettie's house that hits the spot?
Or maybe those barbecued ribs that nobody does better than Uncle Hal?
In the spirit of great family cooking, we're committed to helping families everywhere preserve and protect their family recipe heirloom.
We've created a unique community environment here at Family Recipe Central to help you do just that!
The Community and Group Features Set Us Apart ...
At the FamilyRecipeCentral.com website, each family can create a group. Within your family group you can come together, wherever your family members might be located, and collaborate on recording, documenting, collecting, sharing, improving, and growing your collection of family recipes. A powerful recipe management system lets you easily manage your recipes in so many ways, including the ability to publish your recipe collections in your own family cookbook.
Thin Crust Pizza Dough - Video Step by Step Instruction
Pizza is definitely a popular convenience food. And while it may seem easier to have that pizza delivered from your local pizza shop, you may not realize that homemade pizza dough is really not that difficult to prepare.
If you're a pizza fan, nothing quite compares to a fresh, homemade pizza!
Food and Holidays - Ideas For Your Family Cookbook
Almost every holiday we celebrate comes with a vast lineup of traditional recipes we like to prepare. We know the familiar holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Easter, and the 4th of July that immediately bring to mind the expectations of memorable food associated which each holiday. Of course the Thanksgiving turkey, the Christmas ham, and of course we can't leave out those barbecue ribs at the 4th of July.
The food that we enjoy at holidays and the many recipes that we prepare at the celebration of each holiday provide great ideas and themes for your family cookbook. You can create entire sections of recipes and memorable stories in your family cookbook around each of the holidays that brings family together.
If you have enough ideas and recipe material, you can even dedicate an entire family cookbook theme to just one holiday. A collection of Thanksgiving recipes with pictures and stories about the family thrown in, for example. Or a collection of all of the dishes that were served at your last Christmas holiday gathering. Perhaps something like the "Hill Family 2008 Christmas Recipe Cookbook" as another example. The holiday food ideas for your next family cookbook are almost unlimited.
OK, so much for the well known holidays ... I'm sure you get the idea.
But you might not be aware of the many lesser known food holidays throughout the year. Whether some of the more obscure food holidays and food celebrations offer good ideas and themes for your family cookbook, you'll have to decide. But I assure you, the field is wide open.
Cooking Up a Story - The Art of Food Photography
You can have a lot of fun creating and composing your recipes and cookbooks at Family Recipe Central. One of the features that our users appreciate is the ability to embed and include photographs in your recipes and cookbook pages. And, sooner or later, this introduces you to the challenge for "Food Photography".
When I became interested in publishing my own recipes and the creative process of putting a family cookbook together, it didn't take long to realize that shooting pictures of food is not as easy as it looks. Or maybe it's not so much that it looks easy. But how often have you compared your own food pictures to the stunning food photography we often see in cookbooks or on some of the food websites around the Internet, and scratched your head with the question, "how do they take such great food photos"?
Cooking Up a Glossary of Cooking Terms at Family Recipe Central
See our newly added "Glossary of Cooking Terms" under the "Help" section at Family Recipe Central. It's a modest collection of cooking terms at the moment, with about 60 entries or so.
We'll continue to add cooking terms and definitions on an ongoing basis, but it's a nice start to kick off the section.
Recipe Index Cards are Popular and Easy
Once you start entering and keeping your recipes online at Family Recipe Central, you'll find that printing your recipes on recipe index cards is simple and convenient. I must confess, as much as I really appreciate working with recipes online, I still prefer to read recipes from a printed copy while cooking in the kitchen.
For the environmentally conscious, if you're committed to saving the trees, then by all means, you can bring your notebook computer into the kitchen and refer to your recipes online as you cook. But there's something familiar and comfortable about keeping recipes in journals, index cards, or just piles of scrap paper (although, that gets pretty disorganized).
Of course, with a little bit of improved technology, we're all about solving the hard-copy recipe chaos!
At Family Recipe Central, we suggest a "best of both worlds" solution. You can manage your recipes online with all the convenience and facility to share, collaborate and organize your recipes. And keeping your recipes online provides easy access to your recipe collection no matter where you happen to be. For the kitchen, when it's time to cook, with the push of a button, print any recipe in a clear, beautifully formatted 4x6 inch or 5x8 inch index card, as well as a full 8½ by 11 inch page if you prefer.
Printing your recipes on standard index cards is pretty economical too. No expensive special photo paper necessary for your ink-jet or laser printer needed, just ordinary standard index cards that you can find at any office supply including Staples or Office Depot. At last check, a 500 pack of 5x8 inch plain (not ruled) index cards was about $10. That's about 2 cents a card.
We like to use 5x8 inch index cards. They're large enough to contain a more detailed recipe on a single card, yet still convenient to store in a recipe file box or small 5x8 inch 3 ring binder (more about that in a moment).
Most ink-jet and laser printers today can easily print 5x8 index cards. Similar in size to photo paper, index cards typically load into an adjustable printer tray. And some printer models allow a 5x8 index card to be fed individually, similar to an envelope single feed.
At 2 cents per card, you can afford to print a fresh copy if you spill some sauce on your recipe index card while you're cooking in the kitchen. But we like to protect the index cards with the thin plastic film protectors you see in the pictures below. A 25 pack of 5½ x 8 inch top loading plastic sheet protectors runs about $5. You can protect 2 recipe index cards per sleeve (front and back), so it's quite affordable. If you spill something on the sleeve, it easily wipes off clean with a paper towel.
Soup to Nuts - musing about food expressions
Soup to Nuts - now how did that saying get started?
We hear the common colloquialisms, expressions and idioms everyday, and usually just take the words for granted. We're almost numb to their meaning. Do you ever stop to listen to the words, and wonder "where did that expression come from"?
I had that pause the other day when someone mentioned "soup to nuts" in the context of what we were talking about (and I honestly can't even remember what we we're talking about). OK, we know that soup to nuts means everything from A to Z, or maybe more accurately, everything from start to finish.
But just how did the phrase "soup to nuts" come about? In the spirit of the general food interest here at Family Recipe Central, I thought I would "spill the beans" (another shameless food related saying) and dig up the derivation of the expression "soup to nuts".
Family Photographs for your Family Cookbook
As you plan and layout your family cookbook, be sure to include plenty of photographs and images. Not only do photographs bring an exciting visual dimension to your recipes, you'll want to capture the memories that family photographs will add to your family cookbook.
A family cookbook is more than a collection of your family recipes. This is your special opportunity to tell the family story and capture your family history. And all of those photographs that you've collected over the years make the perfect addition to your family cookbook.
Here are a few ways to incorporate photographs in your family cookbook
- Recipe and food images
- Family portrait (the family group)
- Portraits and pictures of family members
- Honor the chefs and cooks behind the family recipes with a photo
- Pictures of babies, children and grandchildren
- Pictures of the family pets (how about a funny food story or mishap with a family pet to go along with a picture of your pooch)
- Pictures at the holidays
- Pictures from family vacations
- Pictures from family events and celebrations including family reunions, birthdays, weddings, etc.
- Pictures in the kitchen
- Pictures of the houses and towns where your family has lived
Tell the story with pictures and words.
Family Cookbook - So Many Family Stories
When you set out to create your family cookbook, don't just focus on the family recipes. It's also about capturing the family stories and preserving the family memories. There are so many ways to weave stories about our family members into the family cookbook content.
Here are a few of the more obvious opportunities to capture and tell the family stories
- Biographies of family members
- If your family immigrated to America, how did they get here?
- Every family event offers a story (weddings, holidays, graduation, births, family reunions, family vacations, etc.)
- A family member's special skills and talents (sports, charity and philanthropy, dancing, photography, hobbies, careers, inventor, gardening, storytelling, etc.)
Family stories spring forth from some of these less obvious places
- Sentimental objects that remind you of a family member
- Letters from a family member can reveal a whole chapter of memories (romatic letters when Grandad was courting Grandmother)
- A family disagreement and the lessons learned (hopefully you can find some wisdom even in the family conflicts)
- A family member's military service and the pride and gratitude we hold for all that make this courageous contribution
- Life's embarassing moments (hopefully everyone is a good sport)
Never Underestimate the Power of an Old Family Recipe
How many times have you heard the phrase "from an old family recipe"? It tends to strike a powerful emotion. After all, we identify with great cooking that has stood the test of time. Particularly if it's a special dish or preparation that originates from the family kitchen several generations back, handed down over the years. If we can establish that we're cooking from an old family recipe it has to be authentic. The real deal for sure!
We certainly treasure our own family recipes that have been handed down from one generation to the next. We tend to honor home cooking as better, more wholesome food. Somehow, nothing else can quite measure up to the flavor and taste of that old family recipe.
And the old family recipe makes us feel connected to our family's prior generations. It gives us a sense of duration and permanence. Pretty good family endurance if you can say that you've been preparing a special dish in your family the same way for 150 years.
Sometimes an old family recipe is so good it becomes the basis for starting a company. A commercial food venture based on an old family recipe can leverage a powerful marketing message. For some, it may even come off as a ploy, trying to take advantage of our emotions. After all, if your family recipe is so good that my family will want to feast on your family's cooking, it must be some spectacular food.
