Popsicles and Frozen Images: The start of my Family Cookbook Adventure

Although I love cookbooks, I've never attempted write one...until now.

I am starting the process of creating a mini family cookbook in the hopes that I can nail down the process of writing a cookbook before I start on a full-fledged heirloom cookbook project.

This picture is the inspiration for my cookbook:

This is me, my sister, and my three cousins eating popsicles on my parent's front steps around 1991

For some reason, I have always loved this picture. I don't remember the picture being taken, but it reminds me of everything that I loved about my childhood, about summers in Minnesota, and about my family. We were the family that ran around with popsicle stains on our mouths and clothes, chlorine in our blonde hair, and allowed dubious fashion choices from the younger set. I loved popsicles then, and I still love them now.

It might seem strange to you that a picture of popsicle eating youngsters would prompt me to write a cookbook, but let me explain further.  It was less than two months ago, that I snapped this picture of my son.

This is my son eating his first popsicle on Easter Day 2014

If it's not obvious from these pictures, my family loves popsicles! We actually love frozen treats of every type.  My mom often talks about the first time she visited my Dad's house (they were high school sweethearts), my auntie Maggie asked her if she wanted ice cream.  My mom agreed, and Maggie proceeded to put three enormous scoops of ice cream into a bowl and hand it to my mom. At first, my Mom was a bit shocked at the amount, but now my Mom could eat that amount every day (although she refrains for health reasons).

My parents almost always have popsicles and ice cream in the freezer, and every time I go home to visit them, I ask if there is any "Strawberry Crap" in the freezer, my younger Brother's name for Cherry Garcia Ice Cream.

All of these fun memories surrounding frozen confections make me want to create a little cookbook for my Mom, my grandmother, my Aunt, my sisters, and a few other people who I love.  In addition to a handful of family recipes (such as my Auntie Maggie's Famous Ice Cream Desert, or my Mom's Grasshopper pie, and my Dad's perfect Ice Cream Milk mixture), I have a few popsicle recipes that I've developed (like Frozen Mocha Pops, and Berry Creamsicles) that I want to include.

On top of that I've got pictures, quotes, and memories galore that I want to incorporate into a fun Christmas gift (which is why I am starting right now).

My plan to write a family cookbook:

Collect: 

For the next 6 weeks, I will spend time collecting recipes, photographs, and memories from my mom, my sisters, my brothers, my dad, my aunt and my cousins. I will try to talk with my Grandma on the phone too, but she is getting quite old and has a hard time of keeping track of the conversation.

I am committing myself to not editing anything during this time.  I think editing to early is destructive to the writing process, but I am giving myself full liberty to follow any rabbit trails that I want.

I know that I won't be as organized as this. Instead of a recipe box, I will just throw everything into one paper folder and one electronic folder

Curate:

After six weeks, I am going to start organizing my memories, the photographs, quotes, recipes and the memories of others that I've collected and attempt to craft a powerful story line out of each artifact. I know that I will have a hard time discluding certain facts, but I will pare down everything that I've collected so I can start to make the best possible product.

I think that this will be the most painstaking portion of the process. I am planning on spending just 10 days on it because I think having a short focused deadline will help me to savor the memories, but I will feel just enough pressure to cut the fluff that I will actually do the work that I need.

I'll be a curator...It's kind of a big deal.

Write:

During this phase, I will plan to take the memories and use powerful descriptive and metaphorical language to turn memories into written stories that make sense and convey the beauty and depth and inevitable humor of the real life characters. I might even enlist my English Teaching older sister, and my thesis Published younger sister to help me out.

Since this is a relatively short book, I think writing out memories will only take one week, but for a longer cookbook, I would set aside at least 30 days for this.

Test:

For the recipes that I have never made, I plan to test the recipes to ensure that the proportions make sense (after all, I could use a few more frozen deserts in my life). Importantly, I plan to photograph the results since these photos might prove to be valuable assets in the design phase of the cookbook writing.

I may actually start doing this during the curation phase, but I expect this to take one day per recipe.  My guess is that I won't test more than 6-8 recipes for this, but for a full fledged cookbook it might be a few dozen.

I'll be getting my inner Julia Child going as I test the recipes for my cookbook.

Scan:

I plan to scan pictures, recipe cards, and anything handwritten that made it through my curating stage. It will be much easier for me to design the cookbook if everything is digitized and in a single place (in the cloud).

This should just take a few hours.

Design:

I'll have everything that I need to start creating a cookbook, so I'll actually start. I know that there are resources that are specifically devoted to cookbook writing (such as HeritageCookbook.com, but I might prefer the asethetics of a site like Lulu.com of Snapfish.com), but in all honesty, my combined desire for freedom of design and a spiral bound book might lead me to create my own process altogether.

I will be combining pictures, words, recipes, quotes and graphics to create my final product.  I don't want to skimp on this part at all.  I expect that this will take about 3-4 weeks if I do it on my own, or just 3-4 days if I go with a prepackaged solution.

Design? I don't have a clue.

Print:

Depending on the source for the design phase, I may need to find a printing service and have these books printed (which I expect would take at least one month), or if I go with a packaged solution, I think this could be ready in just a few days.

Enjoy:

I almost always give horrible Christmas gifts (Chipotle Gift Cards every year), so this year I am excited to give a gift that I know everyone will enjoy.

Making a family cookbook for these special ladies, and me!