Do you have a favorite family recipe that you would like to learn how to preserve? Often recipes are an important part of family memories and nostalgia but they can be impossible to read, damaged, outdated, missing essential information, or even be completely unwritten. 

Join us on April 29th at 7:00pm for a virtual author talk with Valerie J. Frey who will guide us through gathering, adjusting, supplementing, and safely preserving family recipes.  

About the Book:

This book is a guide for gathering, adjusting, supplementing, and safely preserving family recipes and for interviewing relatives, collecting oral histories, and conducting kitchen visits to document family food traditions from the everyday to special occasions. It blends commonsense tips with sound archival principles, helping you achieve effective results while avoiding unnecessary pitfalls. Chapters are also dedicated to unfamiliar regional or ethnic cooking challenges, as well as to working with recipes that are “orphans,” surrogates, or terribly outdated. Whether you simply want to save a few accurate recipes, help yesterday’s foodways evolve so they are relevant for today’s table, or create an extensive family cookbook, this guidebook will help you to savor your memories.

About the Author: 

VALERIE J. FREY (pronounced "fry") is a writer and archivist from Athens, Georgia with projects focusing on genealogy, social history, and foodways. Valerie holds degrees from the University of Georgia and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her archives career began with a Junior Fellowship in the Manuscripts Division at the Library of Congress, and she went on to serve as Manuscripts Archivist at the Georgia Historical Society. She later became the Education Coordinator of the Georgia Archives where she developed public service programs as well as created resources for educators and their students. She now writes and conducts research full time. Her previous foodways book, Preserving Family Recipes: How to Save and Celebrate Your Food Traditions, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2015. She is currently under contract for another book involving historical recipes slated to be published in late 2024.