Introducing EATS & SWEETS - a new cookbook!

Hellloooooo Readers!  Happy Sunday!

Today I am very excited to show you something Becky and I have been working on for the better part of the year...it's a cookbook!!!!

EATS & SWEETS is a collection of over 25 appetizer and dessert recipes that were served at the Ignatian Young Adults (IYA) socials at St. Ignatius Loyola Parish in NYC during the 2010-2011 year.

Becky and I are on the IYA committee, and when it was suggested that we do a cookbook as a fundraiser for the group, we said we'd put it together. (They think we were being generous, but it's always been a dream of ours to publish a cookbook. Isn't it great when everybody wins?)

The cookbook has an EATS section (appetizers), with recipes like...

...and a SWEETS section (desserts), with many recipes you already know, like Oatmeal Lemon Creme Bars, Berry Cornmeal Crumble Bars, and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, plus some new recipes, like Raspberry Oatmeal Bars.

Beck and I were determined to reinvent the church cookbook - no spiral bound, endless expanse of B&W typewritten recipes for us. It's the 21st century, people!

We thought it would be a piece of cake. We already had several recipes and photographs on hand thanks to this blog, after all.

Boy were we wrong.

It's one thing to post recipes and photographs on a (semi-)weekly basis one at a time, as you please, with the option to go back and change things later as you like. It's a whole other beast to put together a physical book. There was a recipe style guide to consider, photo dpi's to be checked, recipes to be made and re-photographed, budget numbers to be balanced, and deadlines to torture us keep us on track.

I don't know why the hard work came as a surprise to me...I make books for a living, after all. I suppose I didn't realize that while as an editor I am only responsible for one part of the publishing process, here I played all roles - author, editor, designer, copyeditor, proofreader, production manager, marketer, publicist, sales person, and bookseller. There were even some nights I dreamed of cookbooks.

But man, when that first finished copy arrived, it was like all the Christmas mornings of my lifetime put together. I understood just a little bit more how my authors at work feel when they see their finished books for the first time.

Of course, the best part of all this is that proceeds go right back to support IYA programming.

Check out the fancy-schmancy book preview below and if you like what you see, feel free to click through to the Blurb bookstore and order a copy for yourself, or for yourself and your 50 closest friends :-)

-Katie

Eats & Sweets by The Ignatian Young Adults at St. Ignatius Loyola Parish, NYC | Make Your Own Book