Gloria Clark, a member of West Albany Italian Benevolent Society’s Auxiliary Group, was with Louise Donato, president of the group, and said to her, “We’ve never done a cookbook. Why?”
Immediately, Donato looked at Clark and asked her if she wanted to head a committee to create the cookbook. After a year, the result has been published and the proceeds are on their way to helping the various causes the society looks to.
“We do fundraiser and we help people,” Clark said. “There are endless things we give to, so we felt it would be a good way to raise money for the auxiliary and give money to these people and the other girls agreed.”
The cookbook is out of stock now, with 800 books sold to members of the Christ Our Light Catholic Church and members of the outside community. Clark said the women collected over 300 recipes for the book. The process for collecting all of the recipes was a long and tedious one, but Clark said it was a great experience.
The women asked for people to send in recipes to add to the collections they already had. After they received all of the recipes, they had to go through them and pick out ones they wanted to put in the book. Clark said she was tasked with proofreading all of the recipes before the book was sent to the publisher because she didn’t want to submit a recipe with the wrong information.
“We were proofreading because you have to make sure it didn’t come up as a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon,” she said. “I’m a good cook and know how to read recipes and what kind of ingredients go into recipes. I would sometimes go back to the person who submitted the recipe and they’ll know if they’ve written down something wrong.”
Donato said one of the purposes of the book was to preserve and revive some of the recipes that have been handed down from generations. Foods such as homemade macaroni, making Italian cookies in a flower bowl and how to make marinara sauce were some of the things covered in the book.
“We wanted to help pass all that along,” she said. “We wanted to help memorialize it… We have varying age groups in the auxiliary. The average age is well over 65 years old. They’re experienced aunts and mom that have a great wealth of heritage and knowledge.”
The book ended up being published through FundCraft in April. Donato said the group was not expecting to sell nearly as many as have been sold, and is planned on raffling off some of the cookbooks that were left over.
“The response was tremendous,” she said. “We haven’t heard any more demands for them and every now and then people will ask if we have any more.”
The books sold for $10 and the money raised went to the auxiliary’s treasury so they can help the various charities they usually donate to. This time around, Donato said they donated $500 to the hurricane relief and $300 to the West Albany Fire House.
Clark said she had a really great time putting the book together and said there was a lot of help coming from people in and outside of the committee. Even if it took a lot of work to get completed, Clark said it was a good experience.
“The other three women we had were very good to work with,” she said. “They were helpful and we had a lot of fun going through the recipes and picking out the ones we would put in our book.”
