Article: Food is Full of Memories!
Have you ever tried scrapping your recipes?

I come from a family of great cooks, many of my childhood memories are of wonderful family meals, cooking with my mother and my granny, holidays, picnics. In more recent years it is the birthday cake recipe which was always used for my daughters’ birthday parties (i.e. cheap, big, tastes great, cuts well, it has all the qualifications!) their favourite cookies – you get the idea? Every now & again I would come across a scrapbooked recipe page and would think it a lovely idea, even did a few, but never really got properly started – main reason? The task seemed far, far too overwhelming!

Recently, our younger daughter, Raewyn, was married, a few months before the wedding our elder daughter, Kate, suggested making a recipe book of family favourites, the idea was that each lady in the family make a page (8” x 10”) each to be put into a sleeve in a binder and given to her at her shower. When Kate told me of the plan she also gaily said that she was sure that I would make lots! - this on top of the lists that all Mum’s of the bride have to contend with! But it got me thinking………. I had always wanted to do a scrapbooked recipe book – how to go about it?

Suddenly it dawned on me that the tack was overwhelming because I had not broken it down into smaller chunks – yes the sight of my bulging recipe file in the kitchen was overwhelming but was it really necessary to scrap the recipe I had got for the chicken dish I had printed off cookalot.com??? Very definitely no, it was the recipes that held the memories that were important, and even there they could be broken down further into smaller categories.

Because speed was of the essence & I wanted the pages to have a uniform look, I started off by choosing a colour scheme & making a kit Granny’s Pudding and Granny’s Pudding Add On Pack 1 (Granny’s Pudding was the first recipe I did, one my dear Mum taught the two girls to make and has remained their top favourite dessert) Obviously, the category in this case was going to be “Raewyn’s favourites” so I made a list of the ones that I wanted to do & started……..

Fortunately, all my favourite recipes are in a recipe program, so I didn’t have them to type. Photos have also been a stumbling block, a daunting task to have to actually make a dish, photograph it and then make a page…….. Then it dawned on me – what was the real importance of this page? Not the finished product but the memories behind it! This though literally set me free – I could browse through albums, looking for associated photos, birthday photos, not necessarily of the cake itself, Christmas photos, not necessarilyof the Christmas Pudding – get the idea? I have these (remember it is a work in progress!) here.

Once I had done some for the shower I got all enthusiastic about the whole idea and made a Christmas Recipe Book, again a manageable, bit sized chunk of my recipe collection, nothing too scary! For these pages, I included all the “memory” Christmas pics I could – recent Christmases, Christmases from years back, Christmas ornaments, all the memory stuff I could find. Again I did it 8 x 10, and then I laminated the pages (adding a little extra “Blank” lamination on the left hand side), punched them, and then “bound” with split rings. Into these I tied bunches of Christmassy ribbons – result? Gifts that I was so proud to give, one to each of the ladies in the family, gifts that only I could give. If you would care to take a look at the pages for inspiration they are in an album here.

I do so hope that this has perhaps inspired you to start scrapping your food memories. If it has I’d love to see the results – please do email or p.m. me in case I miss them in the gallery.

Meryl

© Meryl Bartho February, 2006