One Decade Ago

We were making the last cookbooks today from the few copies I had left sitting in a drawer.
It all goes back to the American Girl Club that I ran when Meggar was a little girl. We started a book club/doll club/more like library storytime for big girls, and it was based on the historical fiction series by the same name. We met seven times a year with a different American Girl doll as each party's theme. I read from her storybook aloud, presented a craft from that time period, offered snacks which followed the theme, and usually had an historically-accurate speaker or game/activity to finish out the evening.
The snacks got us thinking about cooking classes, too. All the publicity landed Meggar a cooking segment on the local 5:00 TV news starting on March 5, 2001. She dressed up like the American Girl she was cooking for and often invited a friend from the Club to appear with her (there were 200 on our mailing list during those three years). Here is her photo at age 10.
We printed the first 36 recipes from her TV show into a little spiral-bound cookbook and sold 300 of them for $3 each. By age 12, Meggar decided she was too old for the dolls and club anymore.
But the idea of being fair to the boys was still in the back of my mind. So I offered a "Boys Can Cook" class at the Homeschool Enrichment Days (on Tuesdays for three different semesters). I wanted boys to be able to make things that were healthy and/or fun since they are hungry all the time. We cooked 4-5 different items each week and age them all!

Of course, everyone wanted the recipes, so I made a spiral-bound cookbook with 100 recipes and an appropriate cover that sold for $5 each. The twins helped me do the binding today. I now have four "American Girl" cookbooks and four "Boys Can Cook" copies put away for future grandchildren.