Nicole- you sound like a wonderful daughter. I am truly sorry for your loss.

You can get archival sleeves for these recipes & keep them in a nice binder. That way, you can organize them how you'd like & then just pull out the desired recipe when you're ready to cook it. The sleeves will preserve the paper (and those all important stains) and protect them from your spills. I just found a recipe that my grandmother wrote out for me & it's written on the same paper she used for letters. So it brought back many happy memories (she passed 8 years ago).

I also agree about scanning the recipes. It's a great idea to have a backup- plus you can forward the recipes to other loved ones.

Advice from a librarian - NEVER laminate things that you want to save archivally. It can yellow the paper underneath, and most importantly it is very difficult and very expensive to reverse. There is a lot of information online about how to preserve personal collections or archives. You might want to limit to .gov sites as you search. One example is: http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/Exhibits/preservation.htm

Good luck!

It may be a time consuming thing to do, but you could re-write them on notecards and keep them in a box for your own use, and then take hers and put them in a scrapbook, or in a binder made for holding notecards. I'm a messy cook, so I don't actually use my great-grandmother's recipe cards. I wouldn't want to ruin them, you know?

I have a metal box that I keep notecards with recipes in. It really is the best way to go.

Since they sound important to you, I would both scan them and also transcribe them into something like a Word document. When I finalize a recipe of my own, I make sure to write it up and take a photo of the dish, and then I can easily share with someone and/or double check my own measurements if needed. You can even self-publish a book version to have them all in one place.

We have a binder with plastic sleeves where the original recipe cards are kept, and we've also scanned/transcribed the most important ones and created a printed photo book (which is nice because you can easily have more copies printed for relatives).

Scan them and store them in an online document server like google docs. I'm a huge fan of its capabilities, and anyone with a gmail account already has access. You can download them, share them with other family members, and they're safe from harm.

Because you are so sentimental, maybe you should ask for these for Christmas, very sweet and you could have her in the kitchen with you all the time! http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/07/turn-recipes-into-tea-towels.html

When I graduated from college (and finally had time to cook), my mother made me a cookbook in scrapbook style. It was filled with recipes she made throughout my childhood and knew that I loved. She also added a section at the bottom of each recipe with her personal notes: advice on difficult parts, funny stories about a time she messed it up, her favorite memories of eating that dish, or who she got the recipe from originally. My favorites are the ones that say, "Sub veggie broth if you're still in your vegetarian phase" or "You can add cilantro to this if you've decided you like it now." My mother passed away 3 years ago (I was also 25), and I am so thankful for this cookbook. Your mom sounds a lot like mine.

I would recommend scanning or typing the recipes out and making a digital/printable copy you wouldn't mind messing up, then put them in a book with plastic sleeves. You could add your own notes about your memories of that recipe, or anything she may have written in the margins. While I'm waiting for water to boil or soup to simmer, I love reading the notes and remembering my mom.

Another option with scanning would be to use Shutterfly or a similar service to make them into a nice, hard-bound book you can keep with your other cookbooks, rather than just printing them on plain paper. This would be especially nice if you included photos of the finished dishes.

I scanned and organized all my grandmothers recipes into a pdf file worked great, check out how I did it here. http://cookbetterthan.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/first-cookbook-conservation/ Then I shared them with all the family!!

I'm an archivist, and I will echo what RMurphy said. Please, please, please don't laminate them! I would scan them (I like Katy-kate's idea of having them made into a bound book) and then put the originals in clear plastic sleeves in a binder or box for safe keeping. I wouldn't be too concerned about the writing fading, they should be fine as long as they are not exposed to light on a long-term basis.

This thread is making me smile today. I think I'm just going to leave it up and refresh whenever the store traffic allows me a moment to visit my desk.

What a beautiful story, and what a treasure trove!

My recommendation to you would be to scan the cards, and them printed up in a book, similar to other posters.

However, for the original cards themselves, I would preserve them in an archival album. Try googling for archival products to find the right solution for you; don't use regular plastic sleeves or albums which you find in stationary stores; what you need is a special acid-free product. You'll note that the newspaper clippings are probably already yellowing in breaking down; that's because of the high acid-content in pulp paper. The key is to store your trove in acid-free conditions from now on in order to limit further deterioration.

This is the source I have always turned to for archival supplies:

http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com/

Good luck!

As a few others have suggested, scan everything (front and back) at high resolution, and use the scans to make a cookbook that you can use every day. This also might make a great present for family members, BTW. Try Blurb, Apple, or any of a bunch of other sites. Store the originals somewhere safe. Check out University Products, an archival supply company (universityproducts.com), for acid free albums, pages, etc.

Hi Nicole! I find myself in almost the exact same situation. Mom passed away 2 years ago when I was 27 and she was 57. Her cooking and her recipes are so iconic to me. My siblings and I are working on getting all her recipes scanned for posterity. But I wanted to do something...warmer. I came across this here on The Kitchn: http://www.thekitchn.com/meaningful-kitchen-art-frame-your-old-family-recipe-cards-kitchen-inspiration-174980

I'll be picking 1 or 2 of her hand-written recipe cards to frame. I've also requested a favourite recipe from my grandma. I'm planning to add more eventually, from the women in my life (including my partner's mother and grandmother as well). This project feels really comforting to me, a sort of tribute.

Best wishes for the holidays! :)

My mom died many years ago (I was 26), so a few years ago I took all of her recipes, some from both my grandmothers, and a few specialties of mine own and my two sisters and had them made into a cookbook via Tastebook. The original recipe cards we scanned so we'd have her handwriting, but I have to tell you, having all those family recipes printed up in a cookbook (it's binder style so there's room to add more) was a great way to preserve them, AND hang onto to the actual originals in her handwriting.

How about getting color photocopies of the recipes and then laminating those photocopies for use in the kitchen? Then you could store the original recipes in acid free folders or envelopes or in plastic view sleeves (make sure to get plastic that doesn't off-gas and accelerate deterioration - polyester and polypropylene are good). As an archivist I use Gaylord or Hollinger supply companies (hi fellow archivists! :)). They are pricey, but as the materials are intended to last a long time their supplies are an investment.

If you decide to frame them as someone suggested, don't frame the originals as sunlight will fade them.

I forgot to mention, I had cookbooks made up for myself, both my sisters, and my father, so we don't lose that cooking and personal history!

I would scan them and make them into a Blurb.com book. It would take time that book site allows you to make picture images certain sizes so you could keep the same dimensions as what your mom wrote them on. Then I would archive in plastic the ones your mom wrote for safe keeping. You could also make copies of the blurb.com book easily and give to other relatives to remember your mom and her fantastic cooking.

I'm also an archivist and I'll echo the comments above not to laminate. Besides University Products, which someone mentioned above, you can also get archival storage supplies (acid-free boxes and polypropylene sleeves) at gaylord.com or hollingermetaledge.com. The Library of Congress also has webpages with guideline for archiving family materials and how to scan properly: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/

My mother also took on a similar project with her mother's recipe cards and used blurb.com to create a cook book with all the recipes transcribed in them along with photos of my grandmother and of her kitchen. That way everyone in the family (and it's a large family) can have copies of the recipes and photos.

As a museum professional, I fourth the sentiment - for the love of god don't laminate!

Digitize everything. Even an all-in-one printer-scanner-photocopier is just fine. Put the settings on a fairly high resolution (I like 600 megapixels for these sorts of projects - not giant, but not teensy either) and save them as jpegs and/or PDFs. Then put those suckers on a backup hard drive, in the cloud, and print copies on acid-free paper.

The originals you can store archivally. Polypropylene or polyethylene bags/sleeves are both inert (aka non-off-gassing) and will keep the acid in them from behaving too badly. Make sure you get polypropylene or polyethylene bags. Regular plastic bags will off-gas and may deteriorate the cards.

Sleeves will also keep them from smudging, tearing, and protect them from any potential spills or splatters should you want to cook from the originals. Storage in acid-free boxes I must also ditto. Professional archival stuff can be expensive, but sometimes office or craft supply stores also sell acid-free storage boxes (usually photo boxes - perfect for your cards) and paper.

Nicole D.'s suggestion of making a book of the scanned originals with transcriptions and photos is also wonderful.

How lovely you have the originals. Good luck preserving them!

Your story reminded me of a project I have on my own to-do list: make material using images of old hand written recipes and use the material to create functional art (napkins, tea towels, table runner, etc.). I was inspired by this: http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/07/turn-recipes-into-tea-towels.html

Good luck!

Hey Nichole! First--I'm so sorry about your mother. My mother died when I was 23, about 6 years ago and I treasure every little bit of her that I have left. But, I'm also an archivist!

Definitely don't laminate them; the laminate will eventually eat away the paper and will cause them to deteriorate. I agree that scanning is a good way to go, but I would also recommend foldering them in archival folders and storing them in an archival document box.

There are a few archival supply stores you can check out. Gaylord, Archival Methods, Talas and University Products are a few of the big names.

Good luck!

I think scanning them and making a cookbook sounds like an awesome idea! That's what I would do (there are many online services that will help you out with this). I would title it:

Important Recipes
by (insert your mom's name)

perhaps by taking a photo or scan of the writing on the box.

After that, I'd put the cards into an acid-free album for safekeeping. What a wonderful find!

For sure scan all the recipes. But if you have siblings, print out copies for each of them and form a book to give them for birthday or Christmas. You can be as simple or elaborate as you want, but they will treasure that book.

What a touching story! I've been doing some genealogy research lately, and I've found that it's very helpful to have digital copies of all paper documents. This both creates a backup and makes them very easy to share with other family members. So definitely scan them. If you don't already have a scanner at home, I have a Canon printer/scanner/copier/fax machine that was totally worth the $100 or so at Costco. You can also find better quality scanners in libraries, especially libraries that are geared towards historical research such as family history libraries or academic libraries. Good luck, and thanks again for sharing that amazing story.

If you're going to scan them, consider using Springpad. I use it for my recipes, you can view the scanned images or type them out, tag them, and view them on any device.