Traverse Bay Farms Releases “The Family Recipe Keepsake,” a Journal for Preserving Family Recipes

Traverse Bay Farms has announced the release of The Family Recipe Keepsake: A Journal for the Recipes and Stories That Should Never Be Lost, a guided keepsake journal created to help families preserve the recipes, memories, and kitchen traditions that often disappear when they are not written down. The printed copy is available at TraverseBayFarms.com

Some recipes should never be lost.

Every family has a few recipes that mean more than the food. They are the holiday dishes, Sunday dinners, handwritten notes, and “a little of this until it looks right” instructions passed quietly from one generation to the next. Too often, those recipes live only in the hands of the family cook. When that person is gone, the recipe is gone too.

The Family Recipe Keepsake was created to interrupt that quiet loss.

“This journal came from something Jennifer and I have seen again and again over the years,” said Andy LaPointe, co-founder of Traverse Bay Farms. “Customers would send us letters, family stories, old photos, and handwritten recipes, and we began to realize how many meaningful recipes were never formally written down. This book is our way of helping families save not only the ingredients and instructions, but the stories, handwriting, and memories behind them.”

Traverse Bay Farms began in 2001, when Andy and Jennifer LaPointe set out to share the fruits and vegetables of Northern Michigan and beyond through gourmet food products families could enjoy with every meal of the day. What began as a small family idea has grown into a nationally distributed gourmet food brand, still rooted in Northern Michigan and still operated by the same family that started it. The book also includes a timeless 10% discount coupon for Traverse Bay Farms products.

Over the years, the company’s connection with customers has grown beyond food. Letters, photographs, recipes, and stories from families across the country helped inspire the creation of The Family Recipe Keepsake.

Unlike a traditional cookbook, the journal contains no recipes from Traverse Bay Farms. Instead, it is a gently guided blank canvas for families to record their own treasured dishes, kitchen notes, family memories, and personal stories. It is designed for the famous recipes, the everyday meals, the imperfect instructions, and the dishes known only within one family, one kitchen, or one neighborhood.

The journal encourages families to capture more than measurements. It invites them to write down who made the recipe, where it came from, when it was served, what made it special, and why it should be remembered.

Made to be written in, cooked from, splashed on, dog-eared, and passed down, The Family Recipe Keepsake is intended to become a working family heirloom.

“Our hope is that this journal lives in a family for a long time,” LaPointe said. “That it gets filled in slowly, used in the kitchen, marked by real cooking, and eventually handed down with the recipes still readable, the stories still intact, and the handwriting still visible on the page.”

The Family Recipe Keepsake is available from Traverse Bay Farms at traversebayfarms.com.

Fill it slowly. Use it well. Hand it down.