For a new baby
A cookbook for a baby to grow up on
New parents get a great deal of clothing that will not fit by March. This is the one gift that gets more useful for the next eighteen years.
Free to make and free to collect. You pay only if you print it.
How it works
You send one link to family and friends. Each person adds the recipe they think this child should grow up eating, and says who taught it to them. We print it as an A4 hardback.
It doubles as a baby shower activity that does not involve guessing the size of anybody, and it works just as well for people who could not come.
What goes in it
The obvious answer is food for a baby, and the better answer is food for a family. Half the value of this book arrives when the child is nine and wants to know how to make their grandmother’s soup.
Ask people to write down what they actually cook, not what they think should be in a cookbook.
When to start
If it is for a shower, start six weeks before it. If it is a gift for after the birth, do not wait: collect the recipes while everyone is excited and print it when things have calmed down. The book can sit finished for as long as you like.
Nobody in the first three months of a new baby wants a task. Hand it over done.
Who to ask
Both sides of the family, and the friends who will be around. This is a chance to get recipes out of the older generation while they are still being made rather than remembered.
Include the parents’ own friends. A page from someone who will be at every birthday for twenty years is worth having.
What contributors are asked
Every contributor gets a prompt with their recipe, so nobody faces an empty box:
- What should they grow up eating?
- Who taught you this one?
- When do you make it?
- What does it remind you of?
What arrives
An A4 hardback book on 170gsm uncoated paper, printed and bound in the UK, with one recipe per page and space under each for a handwritten note. You read the whole thing as a PDF before anything is printed.
Questions
- Is this a baby shower gift or a new baby gift?
- Either. Collected before the shower it becomes an activity on the day, with people writing in the blank space under their own recipe. Collected after the birth it arrives as a finished book when the house is quieter.
- Do the recipes need to be baby food?
- No, and the book is better if they are not. It is a cookbook for a family that has just got bigger.
- Can we add photographs?
- Each recipe can carry a photo, and contributors can send one from their phone as they add it.
Collect it now, print it whenever.
Three questions and you have a link to send. Free until you print it.