Family Recipes - With Love (2022)
A family cookbook/memorial piece.
Year: 2022
Roles: Information processing | Layout design | Printmaking
My partner’s family, which was much bigger and more involved than mine, took a pretty heavy blow during the COVID years, including a young uncle (Andy, one of many and yet irreplaceable), a great uncle, and soon after: Great Aunt Karen.
My partner is a huge fan of Great Aunt Karen, and over time, despite never meeting, I was too. Even though (or maybe even because) we lived on separate continents at the time, I felt the blow each time at the news of their passing.
When I was asked to help put together a cookbook made from scanned family recipes and photos to be given to the rest of the family during her memorial service that summer, I was instantly on board. After years of designing booklets and brochures as my day job, as well as sharing a passion for cooking with my partner, I was eager to get to work.
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It didn’t take long before the photos and recipe scans started pouring in from the family, as they came together to grieve, process, and celebrate. My partner and I worked very hard to transcribe handwritten recipe cards, decipher local brands and nicknames, and to locate/identify her incredibly important and legendary Peanut Brittle recipe - which we did.
I kept the page layouts minimal and legible, with the occasional pop of color. This was functional in two ways: to keep the texts accessible and legible across a wide range of family members, but also to let the photos and scanned recipe cards command the attention that they deserved. After all, this was as much a memorial as it was a recipe collection, and archiving these handwritten pages and photos was incredibly sentimental, and therefore vital.
Some recipes were quite detailed, and some less so. The ‘staple’ noodles recipe is my personal favorite spread: while the recipe card was little more than a list of ingredients and ratios, it is flanked by photos of the family coming together shortly after Karen’s passing to make them together as a family. It is a perfect microcosm of the way decades of home cooking have kept this family close together, and Karen was very much an important hub.
As it turns out, recording and archiving decades of family recipes is quite an intimate affair. I appreciate the (soon to be part of my) family’s willingness to share this personal trove of history with me.
While I unfortunately never had the chance to meet her, I do hope that I have - in some way - gotten to know her a little bit.
Shared with permission of the family.
Please feel free to download a copy, and try the Peanut Brittle!