Join Me for the Family Curator's Book Tour

I love BOOKS! And I am so grateful to be able to showcase authors who have written great books that help preserve our family and food history. So I'm proud to announce that I am one of the bloggers hosting Denise Levenick's , a.k.a. The Family Curator, Book Tour for her new book, How to Archive Family Keepsakes.

A family's food history can include a variety of heirlooms, kitchen tools, cookbooks, recipe cards, ephemera,  table cloths, sliver, and china . Have heirlooms? The Family Curator can help you preserve, archive and hand down those items.

I love that all proceeds from sales from the book during this tour benefit the grant program Denise set up; the  2013 Student Genealogy Grantfounded in 2010 in honor of Denise’s mother, Suzanne Winsor Freeman.

Please read below for more information and for the book tour schedule. Check back here on Thursday, January 22nd for Denise's Book Tour stop  on Food.Family.Ephmera.

Organize your family history heirlooms and research in 2013 -- 

Family Curator Blog Book Tour for How to Archive Family Keepsakes by Denise Levenick – On Tour from January 10-26^th, 2013.

How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia & Genealogy Recordswill be featured in a new Blog Book Tour January 10-26, 2013. With top reviews from leading genealogy bloggers and 5-Star Ratings on Amazon.com, this new resource by Denise Levenick, The Family Curator, will help you organize and preserve your family history heirlooms and research in 2013.

Visit 14 popular genealogy blogs and websites featuring Denise and How to Archive Family Keepsakes for book excerpts, interviews, special guest posts, free downloads, and giveaways.  View the schedule below and at the Blog Book Tour Page .

Thursday, January 10 – Welcome to the Blog Book Tour! at The Family Curator

Friday, January 11 – Meet and Greet Tour Schedule at GeneaBloggers

Saturday, January 12 – Book Excerpt & Podcast Interview at Genealogy Gems Podcast Blog

Sunday, January 13 – Guest Post & Review at Moultrie Creek

Monday, January 14 – Book Excerpt at 4 Your Family Story

Tuesday, January 15 – Guest Post at Olive Tree Genealogy

Wednesday, January 16 – Author Q and A at The Armchair Genealogist

Thursday, January 17 – Shades of the Departed

Friday, January 18 – Guest Post at Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories

Saturday, January 19 – Week 1 Giveaway Winners at The Family Curator

Sunday, January 20 – Book Excerpt at the Practical Archivist

Monday, January 21 – Guest Post at The In-Depth Genealogist

Tuesday, January 22 – Book Excerpt at Food. Family. Ephemera

Wednesday, January 23 – Review & Podcast Interview at Dear Myrtle

Thursday, January 24 – Book Excerpt at AnceStories

Saturday, January 26 – WrapUp and Week 2 Giveaway Winners at The Family Curator

How to Archive Family Keepsakes offers practical guidance for family historians:

•     Helping a parent or loved one downsize to a smaller home

•     Needing a simple, effective filing system for genealogy research

•     Interested in scanning and making digital copies of genealogy records

•     Looking for a way to preserve your family history and heirlooms for future generations

Proceeds from the sale of How to Archive Family Keepsakes during the Book Tour will help fund the 2013 Student Genealogy Grant founded in 2010 in honor of Denise’s mother, Suzanne Winsor Freeman.

About the Author

Denise Levenick lives in Southern California and inherited her love of family history along with a trunk filled with family treasures from her maternal grandmother. She is now the caretaker of several family collections and has adapted professional archival techniques to organize and preserve family keepsakes for a home situation. She is a frequent contributor to Family Tree Magazineand speaks to genealogy societies and service groups about preserving family treasures. Denise created The Family Curator blog in 2007 where she continues to write about her own family history research and preserving family keepsakes.

Join the Blog Book Tour for How to Archive Family Keepsakes January 10-26 for author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways, and more. Visit the Blog Book Tour Page at The Family Curator website for the complete schedule.

Read More

Food For Thought 2013: Monthly Prompts for Writing Your Food History

Whenever I talk  about family food history, genealogists and non-genealogists alike recount wonderful stories about the foods they grew up with, their fond memories of the cooks in their family, and even what the kitchens of their childhood looked like.

I am a big believer in preserving social history for those who are the family's future genealogists. Whether it’s a family history book, a blog, a family cookbook, scrapbook or a Pinterest board, when you share these family memories you are sharing your family history.

That sharing is easier said than done, believe me I know. Encouraging everyone to document their family food history is one thing but what about providing some tools to help?

That’s my motivation behind this series of monthly writing prompts for 2013. Here I will provide  ideas, questions, and images to help you document your immediate and past family food history. Whether it’s writing about your grandmother’s rhubarb pie or seeking out information about what your 3^rdgreat-grandmother cooked on the Oregon Trail, these questions and resources will help you share your family’s food heritage.

Join me as we document family food history with these topics:

January - Recipes

February – The Kitchen

March – Family History

April - Cookbooks

May – Historical Eras

June – Food Production

July – Summer Food

August – Eating Out

September – School Days

October - Sweets

November - Thanksgiving

December – Holidays/Special Occasions

Our first writing prompts will be posted later this week. Cheers!

Read More

Food Friday: Crisp, Baked Chicken

We spend a lot of time at Food.Family.Ephemera talking about community cookbooks and their worth when researching women. While the standard community cookbook is compiled by a group of women to raise funds, there are cookbooks, recipe booklets, and the such that are similar to a community cookbook but published for other reasons.

Today's recipe for Crisp, Baked Chicken comes to us from That's an Idea! Ideas for the Homemaker from the Farm Weekly. The Sioux City Journal. Journal Tribune. (no date). The ideas, including recipes, time saving tips and other household how-to's, were  provided by local "housewives" and printed by  The Sioux City Journal. While this book has no date, my guesstimate based on the tips is  that it dates from the late 1940s to 1950s.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

The first page describes where the content for this booklet comes from. Although this is published by  a newspaper in Iowa, women who wrote tips list addresses for other states including Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Each tip lists the name of the woman who submitted it and her street address.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

This is a great example of how women, even women that we think might not have left much behind, like farm women in rural communities, did participate in their community whether it was providing a favorite recipe to raise money for her church or writing to the local newspaper with a tip she hoped would help other women like herself. This piece is a nice compliment to the federal census or a city directory.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Did the women in your family write a recipe or a tip for  a local newspaper?



**I want to thank my friend Paula Hinkel from the Southern California Genealogical Society for gifting this booklet to me. I so appreciate her thinking of me.

Read More

The Best of Food Friday 2012

On the eve of a  new year, I thought I would recap the most popular Food Friday posts for 2012. 

State Library of Queensland, Australia via Flickr the Commons

They are:

Turkey Skeleton Soup (Nov 23  ) 

Idiot Salad (Oct 26)

Out of Vermont Kitchens-War Cake (October 12) 

Beef Tomato Gravy from the Los Angeles Times (September 14) 

Evansville Favorite Recipes by the Girl Scouts (July 31)

Oh the Things You Can do with Fritos (June 22)

Women’s Glory, Slovenian Women and Pink Tea (May 25) 

I want to thank my readers for checking out Food Friday each week. Have a great 2013!

Read More

Food Friday Follow-Up: German Potato Salad

This last Food Friday I posted a recipe for German Potato Salad. Lucky for me, my friend and fellow genealogist Gary Clark of PhotoTree.com tried the recipe.

Here's what he had to say:

(c) 2012 Gary Clark, PhotoTree.com. Used with Permission

"Loving German potato salad as I do, it was a no-brainer to give the recipe in your December 28^th blog posting a try. For one, the recipe in Favourite Recipes looked simple, and it was. Since the cook book came from Motley, Minnesota, I assumed there were some  German descendants that offered their family favorite."

"I used the ingredients as specified, knowing I could jazz up the recipe on a second try. I took some minor liberties on a couple items, only because they weren't precisely specified.  I used red potatoes, they seem to hold up better while boiling, and left the skin on. I also sliced them before I boiled them.  You just have to watch them closely as they will be cooked in a short 10 minutes or so.  Also, slicing them before boiling keeps you from turning them into mush while trying to slice them once they are cooked."

"I made the sauce as written.  Used red onions as a personal preference, and I probably used a little more bacon than called for. No one complains about too much bacon however.  It also said to grate the onion.  I really didn't want to start crying from the fumes that grating would cause, so I just diced them."

(c) 2012 Gary Clark, PhotoTree.com. Used with Permission.

"This was easy to make, with all the ingredients already in most cupboards. I tried a quick faux wienerschnitzel using thin sliced boneless pork chops. Pounded them even thinner, adding pepper and flour in between poundings.  Fried quickly in a hot skillet with olive oil.  It was not really authentic schnitzel, but pretty good anyway."

"I will make the potato salad again, probably adding a little more vinegar for a bit more bite. Of course this is personal taste."

"Kudos for including this cookbook and recipe in your blog."

Thanks Gary!

Read More

Food Friday: German Potato Salad

Have  holiday leftovers? If you're like us, you may be eating countless ham sandwiches and need something to add to that. How about German Potato Salad?

from the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

Today's recipe comes from Favourite Recipes from  the Motley Lionettes in Motley Minnesota.
This 1980 cookbook includes a synopsis of what the Lionettes had achieved in the past year.

Here's the recipe

Read More

Food Friday: Christmas Fruit Cake

Every year I hear people complaining about fruit cake and every year no one shares a slice with me. Yes, I like fruit cake. When I think of fruit cake I remember an old neighbor who would serve it with tea in a cute tea set complete with a knitted tea cozy.

So here's not one but two fruit cake recipes for you from Recipes from Our Redeemer's (Benson, Minnesota, 1964)

Read More