When family recipes are passed verbally through generations, a pinch of salt slowly evolves into a pitcher of salt. Record properly salted family recipes with today’s Groupon: for $39, you get a lifetime membership to The Great Family Cookbook Project's custom cookbook-creating software (a $99.95 value).
The Great Family Cookbook Project, the culinary brainchild of two high-school friends, helps families of any size to come together and preserve their own collections of recipes with easy-to-use online software. One person, designated as the cookbook's editor, oversees the project and invites friends, family members, and gourmand dachshunds to add their favorite recipes to an intuitive online database. Periodic emails remind everyone to keep adding culinary contributions. Customize the page with layout designs, and intersperse recipe text with an unlimited number of photographs or quotations from existentialist novels. Users keep recipes safe online from chemically-volatile cake batter, print out kitchen-friendly PDFs of the cookbook's pages, or request a minimum of 10 full-color cookbooks from the company's printing service for an additional fee.
Family Cookbook Project
Bill Rice has been exploring his ancestry for more than a decade, so he knows that tracking family traditions is hard work. One summer, over a delectable meal on Cape Cod, he and his family realized that one of the best ways to share their traditions with future generations was right on the plates in front of them. However, Bill wanted to go further than a standard family cookbook by creating heirlooms that share recipes as well as stories and photographs culled from several family members.
Bill’s high school friend Chip Lowell built the technology that was the backbone of the enterprise—and now forms the backbone of Family Cookbook Project, which makes its technology available to clans everywhere. The software allows creators to add personal touches to their books, from hand-written recipes to bookmarks made from the family’s favorite deli meat. It also sends email reminders to contributors, amasses recipes, and hosts an eclectic stock of templates and color schemes.