Cooking Gifts for Aspiring Cooks in My Family!

I've just found some time for Christmas gift-making and shopping!  My life has just been a whirlwind of over-busyness and I'm focusing on a holiday season filled with as little stress as possible!  One great way for me to decrease the normal levels of stress experienced at this time is to keep our gift-giving expenses within budget and at the same time give gifts that will have lasting meaning and memories!

Several years ago I began our first family cookbook with recipes that have been cherished and enjoyed since my own childhood. Each of my kids received one of these cookbooks as a Christmas gift, as well as did my mother and sister.  Every Christmas since the first 'edition' was created, I add about 15 more recipes to their cookbooks since they are binder-bound and can easily be snapped open to add more recipe inserts.  This year I even began adding my favorite and most popular recipes from my blog, 'la bella vita'.  

"Tastebook" is the name of the web-site that helps develop your own custom cookbook.  I love how I can add my own 'story' or thoughts and notes to each recipe.  Having my own photos uploaded really adds a lot to each recipe as well.

One of the coolest things about this cookbook is that there is also an awesome app that can be downloaded onto my iPad2 and iPhone.  So when I'm out and about doing errands or away on a trip and want one of my recipes, all I need to do is pull up the Tastebook app and retrieve a recipe, ingredients, and procedure!  Actually I needed one of my mother's recipes included in my cookbook over Thanksgiving when we were in Hilton Head.  My mother couldn't remember how much of an ingredient to use in a recipe, and so all I did was pull it up on the app and there was her answer!  

How sweet is that?

So all of you foodies, if you need a super great gift for the cooks or cooks-to-be in your life, I highly recommend this cookbook for a gift.  If your friends and family are anything like mine, who not only love to cook, but also value family traditions, I know that they will love this and treasure it for many years!

Isn't this so cool?  My recipes in the cookbook pull up identically on my iPad2!

(PS: I wasn't paid nor solicited for this free publicity for "Tastebook"; 

this post was simply sharing my thoughts with my fellow blogging friends and readers)

Pin It