cookbooks

I have a strong desire to publish a book that can highlight the small town where I grew up. Women love cookbooks and they are great little souvenirs of different places we visit.  My mother has a whole shelf full and can always add another,  so why not write a cookbook that includes stories of the Town? I have been toying with the idea for a year. It’s a centennial celebration this Spring, so I wanted to have this book available to fund some non-profit work. I offered the suggestion to two local non-profit groups, but neither were interested and seemed to think it was “too much work”.  I have gathered ideas for cover photography and talked with a church group that did my favorite cookbook over 20 years ago. They gave me ideas, but said their publisher was no longer taking new projects since he was so old.  I asked a close friend to help for sentimental reasons.  We had written a weekly newspaper article together many years ago and I wanted to use the name of our article in my title. She started strong, but then got distracted with life changes and misplaced the notes she made. I recruited an artist friend and she was excited about the book, until she got busy with commissioned projects, so she is having difficulty finding time. Even with these set backs, I was determined to complete this project on my own.

What is the greatest surprise? My daughter’s reaction.  She was appalled and “offended for cooks everywhere.”  What? Just because I am not a great cook, does not mean I cannot write, produce and publish a great book!  She stood firm, “No way, miss lady”, “I will not help you and you cannot use my recipes”. Too late, I already have two or three of her best ones.:)  You think I am kidding, but she was dead serious. It was an affront to imagine that her mother ( the semi-homemade cook 2) was even considering this project. When I showed a sample of the recipes to my best friend, she was not much better. She asked, “where did you get this cooking time on the rutabagas? It’s not 1-2 hours, its more like 15 minutes”. Ha Ha. I haven’t cooked a rutabaga in 20 years, so I can’t recall how fast they get tender. So, I told her, “I will need some expert editing- to check for little things like that.”  The beauty is the stories and pictures and extranneous items that will make this book special. She just looked at me and reminded me again how unlikely it was that she would be able to find the entire folder of recipes that she had written down and collected for this project. All I can say is getting to the end of a project takes action and perseverance. I am spot on with both of those!!!

Since I had this surprising response, I decided to do a little research on what makes a good cookbook. According to experts, a great cookbook is the total package: it has delicious recipes that work, beautiful photography, writing that inspires and intrigues, and, most importantly, it covers a type of food that people are excited to eat.  But some books are even more than that. Epicurious chose the books that have either stood the test of time or are indispensable for a modern home cook. They suggested, if you only own ten cookbooks, these are the ten you should own.

The 75th anniversary of Joy of Cooking, has been published continuously since 1936, selling 18 million copies. Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking has been in demand for it’s infamously complicated recipes since release in 1961. To be honest, that’s the only 2 of the 10 top choices by Epicurious writers that I have ever seen or heard of. Don’t remind me that this could be due to my lack of expertise in the kitchen.

Ok, let’s think about this. Let’s use a logical check list to evaluate risk/benefits.

1. Check-delicious recipes that work- I have a box of those that I have solicited from significant people in my life.

2. Check- beautiful photography- I have to increase my camera resolution, but there is a Sony just waiting to perform and the little town is delightfully photogenic.

3. Check- writing that inspires and intrigues- haven’t you all sampled a portion of this? 🙂

4. OOPS-  Covers a type of food that people are excited to eat- not sure on this one. I planned to focus on plain and simple country fare with a blurb on the health benefits of each entry.  Is that what people are excited about? I don’t know, but the way I see it, if I find this undertaking to be over my skill set, at least I can publish 4 books and share them with my loved ones.  That’s what the cookbook publishing website requires as a minimum!

I will have fun doing it and learn something new. I have drafted 66 pages of the 400, so let me get back to work! It will probably have a similar flavor as this one that made the #10 slot.  I have a local homemade approach in mind. This one has 175 recipes and is bound like the one I plan. I think the best thing I can do is order a few of these Yankee Church Supper Cookbooks from Amazon and give them as tokens of affection to my naysayers, AFTER I get mine published. That would be a fun conversation piece!! In fact, maybe that is the best I can hope for. If it doesn’t meet kitchen standards, maybe it will land on the coffee table!