Our Cookbook Project

It seems like all I ever have to report is unhappy stuff anymore.

The cookbook was a great idea, suggested by a volunteer who offered to do the lion's share of the work to create it -- receive the recipes, retype each in a standard format for publishing and generally organize the book.

My job was simply to edit the finished product, checking for standard format and checking spelling and the like. And to come up with the book's title!

Ricky was only supposed to choose the paper stock for the cover and the recipe pages, and coordinate the process of bringing the book together.

Shawn, our graphic artist and screen printer from Ballyhoo Specialteez (www.ballyhoospecialteez.com), developed a special graphic for our cookbook cover. You can see, above, what Shawn created for us.

The book was supposed to be finished, and ready for final edit no later than Nov. 1. That would have given us two weeks to edit, proof and print it so that we would have our cookbook ready for sale by mid-November.

Unfortunately, it has not worked out that way. Ricky and I are spending 4-6 hours a day on this project, trying to get it ready for print, and have been for the past couple weeks.

We still hope to have it printed and ready for sale by Thanksgiving. That would allow sales and shipping in time for Christmas. However, there is still very much work to be done before we can go to print, and we want it to be right.

So many of you have told us you plan to purchase cookbooks to give as gifts -- and we don't want to disappoint you or lose those potential sales. If we miss our next deadline, we are working on a "Plan B" to provide pictures of the book cover to give as gifts... we'll then contact buyers when the books are printed so they can pay for them, and we can ship the cookbooks directly to the intended recipients!

But we are hoping it won't come to that, and we will have the cookbooks ready to go by Thanksgiving! Cross your paws for us!