[Sca-cooks] OOP layout and printing question

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

Yes, this is actually food related, but there's a bit of a
lengthy explanation required.

My grandfather was a professional baker--for a long time it was the family
business. Mom and my uncle both worked in the bakery, and my uncle went on
to run his own for a while. All the bakery recipes were kept, handwritten,
in a black leather notebook. When my uncle started his bakery, my
grandmother gave him a notebook (which he still has, somewhere, in a
box) of bakery recipes, which we thought was the only one that was still
around. (A cleaning woman had apparently made off with *the* notebook, but
looking back on it I think what she stole was one of the really good cake
decorating books, because I *know* that one went missing, and it was
around the right time. Anyway.)

My grandfather passed away 16 years ago. My grandmother moved into a
senior residence a couple of years ago, and everything she didn't take
with her went into storage. Neither my father nor I had anything to do
with any of the packing. Recently I was down visiting my father to get
some of said grandmother's stuff that I'd claimed, and to this end we were
moving boxes and looking through them so we had a vague idea of what's
there (since, of course, neither of us had anything to do with the packing
or the moving). In one of the boxes was a paper bag labeled "Bakery
recipes for Selma/Frank/Lois". Printed, so I have no idea who wrote it. In
this bag are five of the aforementioned black leather notebooks, full of
recipes in my grandfather's handwriting.

I've been through them all, and although some of the same recipes show up
in more than one place, they aren't duplicates of each other, not at all.
So my plan is to transcribe all of them, and print them up as a bound book
with copies for each of my grandfather's surviving children and the five
of us grandchildren. With an image of the original next to the
transcription, so one can see where it came from.

Now my quandaries: Do I arrange them in order, i.e., book 1, book 2, etc.,
or do I put all the similar recipes together (there are at least seven
different recipes for chocolate icing, for instance)?

The other quandary is this: Very few of these recipes have instructions.
They're mostly just lists of quantities, usually in weights. Do I try to
recreate the procedures from memory and from similar recipes, or should I
just transcribe what's there and let the various family members do their
own legwork if they want to actually make something?

[Incidentally, I now have my grandfather's recipe for pecan tarts, and
more importantly, for the tart shells. Which is slightly different from
most tart shell recipes, and now I know why mine never tasted quite the
same as his did. Grandpa put almond flour in his tart shells, and the
quantity of butter is different.]

And so I come to you, because you will understand what it is that I have
and what I want to do, and why it's important.

Many thanks,

Margaret


"Please. I have had too much of the stupid today. Please wait until
tomorrow to say these things so my tolerance has refreshed."