Your grandmother s pot roast is more than a recipe. Underneath the rich-brown gravy, woven into every bite of beef, are treasured family memories. One whiff, or even a glance at her well-worn Dutch oven, could make aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, simmer with stories. One bite could take them back to childhood, reconnect them with images of generations past.
Most folks rely on word of mouth to keep family recipes and memories alive.
But details can fade from one generation to the next. More and more, people aren t leaving it to chance. They re creating family cookbooks, preserving the past in personalized collections of recipes. Usually, these aren t published tomes. They re produced in small numbers, ranging from one to 100 copies.