Description
Make a Family Recipe Cookbook
An often overlooked part of family history is the family recipes used for cooking meals shared by generations.
What our ancestors ate, prepared for family gatherings, and cooked for friends tells us more about their lives than when we solely concentrate on names, dates, and places. Cooking reflects ethnic roots, culture, religious beliefs, and locations in our family history.
Female ancestors are difficult to trace because their names are often absent from traditional records. However, you can sometimes find their place in history through community cookbooks, newspaper articles about food, and even on the recipe cards passed down. Through these sources, you can reconstruct their lives.
Join Gena Philbert-Ortega and learn the connection between food history and family history. In this one-week workshop, we'll cover how to gather recipes, organize the collection of recipes, and how to share them as gifts or on social media.
DATE: October 16, 2023 - October 22, 2023
In this course we will discuss food history in relation to family history and then we will discover ways to preserve our family's food history by documenting heirlooms and gathering recipes. We will then learn how to take those family heirlooms and create cookbooks, recipe tea towels, and other items to give as gifts or to use in our own home. Finally, we will discuss ways to share that family food history including social media tools such as Pinterest.
What You’ll Learn:
Lesson 1: Food and Family History
- Social History and Your Ancestor
- Food History
- What Did My Ancestor Eat
- Food History and our Female Ancestors
- Food Traditions
Lesson 2: Picking and Finding Recipes
- Collecting and editing recipes to be used for projects
- What to do if you have no recipes. What sources should you consult?
- Should every recipe you use be “old?”
- Where to look for recipes
- What to do if you have too many recipes
Lesson 3: Archive, Preserve and Organize Recipe Cards and Clippings
- Not Every Recipe is on a Card
- How do we preserve recipe cards
- Organizing Recipes: Things to Consider
- Physical and Digital Organization Options
Lesson 4: Share Your Family Recipes
- Create Your Own Family Recipe Cookbook
- Other ways to Share: Recipes on Tea Towels, Facebook, and more Example: Preserving recipe cards
- Example: Putting together a family cookbook (online, software, self-publish options)
Lesson 5: More Kitchen and Recipe Fun
- Documenting heirlooms in the kitchen (cookbooks, utensils, china, linens, etc.)
- Creating a Scrapbook
- Starting a Blog
- Using Pinterest to find, share, and curate your family food history
About the Instructor
Gena Philibert-Ortega
Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, researcher, and instructor whose focus is genealogy, social and women's history. She holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Psychology and Women's Studies) and a Master’s degree in Religion. Her published works include the book, From the Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes (F+W Media, 2012). She has also written numerous articles published in magazines and online, as well as four editions of the Tracing Your Ancestors series from Moorshead Publishing. She is the editor of the Utah Genealogical Association’s magazine, Crossroads. Her writings can be found on her blogs, Gena’s Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera as well as the GenealogyBank and Legacy Webinars blogs. Her research interests includes tracing female ancestors, foodways and community in fundraising cookbooks, and women's material culture.
How do Family Tree University workshops work?
Take the course at your own pace!
From the course start date, you’ll be able to log in to view and access your lessons and start interacting on the discussion boards. Your instructor will check in regularly to answer all of the questions and provide feedback. You will have access to your courses anytime, anywhere, with a computer, tablet or smartphone, and can study when it's most convenient for you.
After the course end date, the course will become read-only for one year. You will continue to have access through your dashboard to the materials, but the discussion boards will be closed. The materials are yours to keep. You can download them onto your desktop to access online or offline.
