My Book:From the Family Kitchen

From the Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and   Preserve Favorite Recipes

by Gena Philibert-Ortega (F + W Media, 2012)

From great-grandma's apple pie to mom's secret-recipe stuffing, food is an important ingredient in every family's history. This three-part keepsake recipe journal will help you celebrate your family recipes and record the precious memories those recipes hold for you--whether they're hilarious anecdotes about a disastrous dish or tender reflections about time spent cooking with a loved one.

The foods we eat tell us so much about who we are, where we live and the era we live in. The same is true for the foods our ancestors ate. This book will show you how to uncover historical recipes and food traditions, offering insight into your ancestors' everyday lives and clues to your genealogy. Inside you'll find:

•     Methods for gathering family recipes

•     Interview questions to help loved ones record their food memories

•     Places to search for historical recipes

•     An explanation of how immigrants influenced the American diet

•     A look at how technology changed the way people eat

•     A glossary of historical cooking terms

•     Modern equivalents to historical units of measure

•     Actual recipes from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cookbooks

Available as a print book or an eBook for the Kindle or Nook.

Click here to see a sample of From the Family Kitchen.

Press Release:

Explore the Food Your Ancestors Ate in New Book by Gena Philibert-Ortega

What do suet pudding, turtle soup and roast squirrel have in common? They are all foods our ancestors ate. In From the Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes, a new book by author Gena Philibert-Ortega published by Family Tree Magazine, readers can learn more about food history and how to blend foodways and traditions into their family histories.

“Learning about our ancestors is so much more than just finding out when and where they were born or died,” says Philibert-Ortega. “Food history helps bring our ancestors to life and gives us a better understanding of their day-to-day lives.”

From the Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes explores food history and explains how to incorporate those stories, images and recipes into family history. Divided into three sections, this social history begins by looking at the food history of immigrants and the regional differences of food throughout the United States. It explores the history of cookbooks in the United States and gives step-by-step instructions on locating and researching recipes that ancestors would have cooked. Part 2 features a glossary or historical cooking terms and measurements, plus a collection of historical recipes from the turn of the 20th century. Part 3 is a beautiful recipe journal where readers can record their favorite family recipes along with memories of the dish, making this book a keepsake that will be enjoyed years to come.

“This book spans generations,” says Allison Dolan, publisher/editorial director of Family Tree Magazine. “I can’t think of a better way to introduce younger generations to their heritage then by preparing a meal their ancestors would have eaten and then spend the meal sharing family history stories.”           

From the Family Kitchen also includes:

§  Methods for gathering family recipes

§  Interview questions to help loved ones record their food memories

§  Places to search for historical recipes

§  An explanation of how immigrants influenced the American diet

§  A look at how technology changed the way people eat

§  A glossary of historical cooking terms

§  Modern equivalents to historical units of measure

From the Family Kitchen is available in a hardback keepsake edition from ShopFamilyTree.com and other online booksellers. It’s also available as an ebook for the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes&Noble Nook.

About the author

Gena Philibert-Ortega holds a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master’s degree in Religion. Presenting on various subjects involving genealogy, women’s studies and social history, Gena has spoken to groups throughout the United States and virtually to audiences worldwide. Gena is the author of hundreds of articles published in genealogy newsletters and magazines including Internet Genealogy, Family Chronicle, GenWeekly and the WorldVitalRecords newsletter. She is the author of the books Putting the Pieces Together and Cemeteries of the Eastern Sierra (Arcadia Publishing, 2007) and From the Family Kitchen. Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes (F+W Media, 2012). Gena is editor of the Utah Genealogical Association’s journal Crossroads. An instructor for the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, Gena has written courses about social media and Google. She serves as Vice-President for the Southern California Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists, a Director for the California State Genealogical Alliance and on the board of the Utah Genealogical Association. Her current research interests include social history, community cookbooks, signature quilts and researching women’s lives.

About Family Tree Magazine

Family Tree Magazine is part of the Genealogy Community at F+W Media, Inc. <http://www.fwmedia.com>, which also encompasses Family Tree University online courses and webinars <http://www.familytreeuniversity.com>, genealogy books and the ShopFamilyTree.com <http://www.shopfamilytree.com/?r=FTUshop> online store. These publications and products are devoted to providing engaging, easy-to-understand instruction that makes genealogy a hobby anyone can do.