I come from a long line of great cooks. My family's heritage is Polish and we still make many of the ethnic dishes today. Along with my Aunt Irene, I can spend days making pierogies for Christmas. To honor many of my relatives, I put together our family's cookbook. I tried to include all the traditional recipes and then added a section for some family favorites that may not have any historic reference. THIS WAS A MASSIVE UNDERTAKING. From start to finish, it took about a year to complete.
At the time that I made the book, although there were lots of publishing programs out there, there were not draft programs. Meaning, I could not review a hard copy unless I purchased it. I ended up buying a few rounds of drafts which at the time ran up over $100 a copy. In the end, when I purchased the books in bulk, I was able to negotiate a price, but definitely not as cheap as I had hoped to get it.
I was working on a Mac and used Picaboo as my publishing program. I really liked Picaboo. I have to admit I haven't used it since, simply because my Mac became too obsolete and I could not upgrade it to match Picaboo's platform. We just recently purchased a new HP PC, so I'm sure I'll be trying it out again.
For input, I asked relatives to send me photos or any recipe they really wanted to have included to which so many obliged. I used several hundred pictures and could have used many, many more, but each page added more money to the overall cost. I even contacted the county for any historic records on my grandparents and great grandparents homesteads. My family lived, at that time what was considered, a very small town. It was amazing to see that they still marked the property lines and to see some of the old pictures. In the end, the book came to about 80 pages and I am so glad I did it. I really want our traditions to continue into the future generations. This book is a way to hand them down.