A well used family cookbook with its frayed edges and handwritten notes resembles a good worn family bible. There is something to be said for the connection you make when you pull out that family cookbook littered with favorite recipes of loved ones long gone and head into the kitchen.
I would like to say due to the internet, printed cookbooks are flying away with travel agents. However, I can verify personally that the printed word still reigns supreme in our kitchen. The best of both worlds works like this.
For great recipes, I go online and print them out. Then, if they live through the meal making without permanent damage, I keep them in a book so I don't have to look them up again and again. Now I have a big printed book of online recipes, hence the supremacy of the printed word.
For as long as I can remember our family had a recipe boxes, each having handwritten index cards written out lovingly by friends and family and traded around like baseball cards. Aunt Meme's Lemon Bars being the "Babe Ruth" of recipes. Uncle Bob's Baked Stuffed Parakeet, originally on the low end of the scale has now grown in fame and is a prized card for humor content only. Each person had their own special metal box these cards fit in perfectly. I loved my Great-Grandma's the best. It had tiny flowers all over it with a yellow background. When grandma was gone it became mine.
Many years ago, for a Christmas project I took all the scraps from magazines and index cards and put together a family cookbook for the past and present generations. While typing up each recipe I reminisced about the time spent in different kitchens or around campfires with grandmas, aunts (even a few uncles), cousins and family friends. I added little bits about each person and a lot of funny stuff. That book was a book of love. My grandma still calls and says. "We were just going over that cookbook you made and laughing."
I like collection cookbooks. The crepe book brought back by our daughter as a gift from France (that we figured out cost us about $4000.00) and the bog cookie book given by a beloved aunt are the favorites. Sitting down in front of the fire with a big fat cookie cookbook and some interested children and picking out which cookies to make is still they way to go. Crowding around the computer monitor, then waiting for each recipe to print just doesn't cut it.
I can only hope sometime in the future, my children or grandchildren will take that big book of food stained internet recipes that we loved and compile them into a family cookbook for the next generations.