Two Christmas’ ago I was really at a loss for what to give everyone.  It was the second holiday season that I would be spending with Brian’s family instead of my own and I really wanted to do something special for everyone.  I decided I was going to collect all of our families [...]]]>

from Tastebook.com

Two Christmas’ ago I was really at a loss for what to give everyone.  It was the second holiday season that I would be spending with Brian’s family instead of my own and I really wanted to do something special for everyone.  I decided I was going to collect all of our families best loved recipes from the past 3 generations and put them all in one place.  Many of the recipes that I had from my grandmothers were written in pencil on scraps of paper, or in the margins of other cookbooks, it was impossible to keep track of what I had.  Hit the Jump for more…

 Surfing around the web I found a new site, Tastebook.com, that seemed like just another recipe keeping site.  As I looked deeper into the site I discovered it was much much more.  For less than $30 you can have your very own 100 page cookbook printed in full colour with a hard-side spiral bound notebook of which you can design your own cover.   To me the best feature was that if you didn’t have 100 recipes at the time of printing you could recieve recipe credits to have additional pages printed at another time.  Tastebook allows you to easily upload your own recipes and format them in a much easier to read manner than those little index cards your grandmother used.   You can even put in your own photos to go next to each recipe.  

The makers of Tastebook didn’t just want to be cookbook printers, they wanted to create a whole community.  By inviting your friends to the site to view your Tastebook you can link your recipes to theirs.  If you had a great meal at your friends house, you can get their recipes straight from his or her Tastebook and into yours.  What a great way to keep families living far away from each other growing their culinary traditions together.

If you don’t want to write your own recipes, the authors of Tastebook have more than 50 starter books.  Each have about fifty recipes that have been pulled together by various editors from well known foodie sites. You can also pull recipes directly into your own cookbook from the started books or from an affiliate websites.   At the time, Tastebook only had recipe imports from the Epicurious website, now you can use specific recipes from sites like 101 Recipes, Food & Wine, Food Network, and many more.  Currently only Epicurious has one touch importing directly from your recipe box on their site, but they intend to offer this feature for the other sites in the future.

In the end I decided to get a Tastebook for everyone on my list.  Each one I made had recipes included that were done by the recipient of the book along with photos of each cook included, as well as from my personal collection.  When it came in the mail I was so excited to see if the book looked at all the way it had been presented on the website.  It far exceeded my expectations.  Now every few months I print recipe update packs for everyone I gave my Tastebook to so they can see what we’ve been cooking, and get the recipes I’ve been pleading other great cooks for.  

If you are looking for a wonderful gift for a foodie friend or a way to preserve your families favorite recipes, I highly recommend using Tastebook.  Check it out at http://www.tastebook.com/