I'm back from the parents, and borrowed a family treasure: my Granny's ledger book of recipes!

H

heather_in_sf

Well-known member
My lofty goal is to transcribe this into a Word document so that my mOm, sister and I can have a copy that we can cook from. Granny's ledger book is an elderly tattered and perilously fragile book that she started sometime in the 1930's or perhaps earlier, and continued writing in for who knows how many years after that.

I am so excited! I hope to share a few treasures with you as I go through the book. I have decided to transcribe it exactly as written, unless some specific modern directions are required. It is such a fascinating look back through time.

Do you and your family have a similar book? Maybe we can start a new thread or category called Gems from our Past or History or something catchy like that. After all day on the puter for work and now on this project my creativity has flown the coop!

Good night from The Roost!

 
I have lots of family recipes, all of which I put on Mastercook.

My husband (the computer expert) and I (the organizer) just finished helping my sister put a cookbook together for her grandchildren. We published it on blurb.com. It is a collection of recipes she has collected over the years from family, friends, internet, etc. and pictures of her grandchildren helping her cook as they were growing up. It really turned out well. I may do the same when my grandchildren are a little older.

 
Heather - after my aunt died earlier this year....

my uncle and her daughter came to visit bringing her handwritten recipe books with them. We took turns scanning them on my all in one - scanned to pdf files.. This way I was able to manupulate, combine and all the recipes and in some cases, easily convert them to text and just cut and paste into Living Cookbook. I'm almost through with our combined family and friends recipe book after having lost a bood bit of it when my computer crashed earlier this year.

And I have the scanned hand written ones on cd's presrved for posterity that I can cheaply and easily share with folks and I can insert them for fun as a picture in the finished product.

 
This ledger is larger than 8x11, more of 14x17 but too fragile to copy

although I am going to give it a try. It's so big, crumbly! Maybe I can work a deal with the copy shop to let me use their machine in lieu of payment bake them some coffee cakes or something.

But meantime I am enjoying her salad recipes, all to be placed on "crisp lettuce"

but back to transcribing interviews for the ghost story book I am "ghost writing" for a friend, actually she's calling me her Senior Editor. fun huh? it's a little creepy, some of these stories....

 
Great resource, Heather!

My mother collected family recipes and put together books of them. At her memorial service, I put together a table of the things she used daily, including some of her recipe cards. Found one for one dish from my great-aunt Betty that said: "Serves six, except when Fenner is eating." (Fenner is her husband.) We all got a good laugh out of that one.

 
Could you take a pic of each page with your camera, then upload them to the computer?

At least that way you won't be handling the recipe book and you can open windows side-by-side... one window with the jpg of the recipe, and another with your word processor.

 
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