Welcome to the 20th Anniversary of the
Hermanson Wahl Family Kookery cookbook!

Yes, 20 years have passed since our first cookbook. Much has happened since then, from advances in technology to approaches to cooking.

We probably didn't thank you enough for sending in all those recipes; we still use the book a great deal (as many of you do, we’ve been told)!  And we continually learn that nearly everyone we know has a very strong affinity towards cooking and eating. So, it’s time to “upgrade”, and learn what our friends and families have been cooking up in the last 20 years!

When we first created the blue-cover cookbook in 1991, it seemed very “fancy” at the time. We collected your mailed-in recipes (no email or texting back then!), entered them into our Mac SE, printed out each sheet, then took the mastersto Kinko’s for copying. Because we had different colored dividing pages and a laminated cover, we hand-collated each book, then took them back to Kinko’s to be bound. The books were distributed either at our wedding or shipped to those that couldn’t attend. Existing copies that we’ve seen seem to be well referenced, stain-splashed, and bent-cornered.

Not only has technology improved (!!), but approaches to cooking have changed as well. We remember the Kinko’s people telling us “there’s an awful lot of desserts in here...” (well, it WAS the Kinko’s in earthy-crunchy Ann Arbor, and there ARE a whole lotta desserts in that book). Like some of you, our personal cooking approachnow focuses more on healthful recipes, more natural ingredients, quick-and-easy preparations, and perhaps more “thoughtful indulgences”.

We started thinking about a sequel to the blue book almost before it was finished.  But no sequel idea really stuck – until technology caught up to what we really wanted: our friends and family cooking – via videos and photographs. What we really wanted is not just sharing recipes, but sharing preparation techniques and laughter in the process. A kind of living cookbook that everyone can go back to again and again, to laugh, to learn, and to share recipes that are a part of their lives.

So, the Kookery Website Volume 2.0 was born. It will be a “work in progress” for the next six months, giving our friends and family chances to include their favorite recipes (along with videos, pictures, and whatever else “tells the story”). We will guide you through the technology should you want us to: the result being a website you can turn to to watch something being made, download a recipe, or just laugh as our friends and family produce some awesome food and drink.

Clicking through the site pages above may give you some ideas on what to contribute. Your inputs can be what you want them to be: a simple recipe posting, a recipe with a couple of illustrative photographs, or a more elaborate video of you/your family preparing something.

So thank you (in advance this time) for sharing your recipes! We’re pretty certain we’ll all have fun in the process!