Today is the sixth post in a seven-part series about Capturing the Everyday as a spin-off from my Baby Center post called 7 Ways to Capture the Everyday. If you missed last week, I wrote about keeping receipts, tickets and other memos.
So much of our lives revolve around food: eating eat, cooking it, cleaning it up when your kids go crazy with it. Do you remember your grandmother’s famous pie? Or your dad grilling out hamburgers? Or making cookies with your mom?
Food stirs up emotion in us all. And so do recipes.
While you may think your recipes are no comparison for your grandmother’s homemade _______, there’s still worth being writing down and taking pictures of. Even if you don’t cook, it’s still important to capture what a typical week night meal is typically like. Or what you typically eat on Sunday mornings with the family. So many of our family memories revolve around the dinner table so why not remember the food too in addition to the laughs (or the squeals and screams as it so happens at our house right now)?
Writing Down Recipes
I put our favorite recipes in a binder. Most of them are printed from recipe sites but some are handwritten.
Handwriting is so important so don’t forget to write some of your favorite recipes out BY HAND (even if you think your handwriting sucks). Also, families pass recipes along to one another. These days it’s often through email. Save the entire email- you may have a little piece of history blended into it. Like that recipe on the top of the right page.
It’s a recipe for a London Broil marinade. One of my sisters emailed it to me for my recipe bridal shower over 10 years ago (she couldn’t come to that shower but she made it to my big one). At the end of the recipe, she mentioned that my nephew just tried baby cereal for the first time. I cherish this email because I sense the new mom excitement in her words. My nephew? He’s 11 now.
Taking Pictures of Recipes
Well, really it’s taking picture of FOOD made from recipes. We do this a lot, especially with easy tools like Instagram.
I love seeing food pictures. Wouldn’t it be cool to see your food pictures in 20 years?
These are a family favorite called Gullets. They’re shortbread cookies you make in a waffle iron. And they are delicious.
Daddy Roo likes to make crostatas from fresh fruit (yes, I’m blessed with a hubby who loves to cook). This one was made last Christmas with blueberries from our neighbor’s blueberry bushes.
Taking Pictures of Recipe-Makers
Big Roo is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to food. He LOVES helping us out in the kitchen. In fact, I attribute him helping us out to the fact that he eats things most kids wouldn’t dare touch (chickpeas straight from the can, anyone?).
When you’re documenting your favorite recipes, don’t forget to get pictures of those who cook them. Ya know those gullets I showed you earlier? Daddy Roo’s grandmother used to make those ONE BY ONE in an old waffle iron held over a flame. How amazing to have a picture of that!
Here’s a picture of Big Roo stirring up our favorite granola recipe (it’s blurry but I love the spin effect in the bowl).
Stay tuned next week when I dig deeper into taking pictures with YOU in them. Yeah, you.