Cookbook proceeds benefit cancer foundation

By Sara Gilbert Frederick
Special to The Free Press

May 17, 2008 03:01 am

— As she was driving home from her mother’s breast cancer surgery in January, Mankato native Christy Eichers couldn’t shake the feeling she had to find some way to help. Although her mother’s surgery had been successful, she had already lost her grandmother and an aunt to the disease.
“I just thought, I’ve got to find a way to make some money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation,” she says. “Suddenly, it was like a light bulb went off. I knew we had a lot of great family recipes and decided to put together a cookbook.”
Thus was born “Mixing up Memories,” a hardcover cookbook that includes about 140 recipes as well as personal stories about each of the cooks and many of the recipes. It was a labor of love, Eichers says, that came together in record time.
“I was a hermit all winter,” says Eichers, who now lives in the Twin Cities. “If anyone was looking for me, I was on my couch with my laptop.”
Her work paid off. The book, which was self-published through Beaver Pond Press, was off the presses before her self-imposed deadline of Mother’s Day. It was officially launched with a party May 7 at Enchanted Forest in Mankato.
Already, about 1,200 of the 2,000 copies printed have sold. Thanks to the generosity of a longtime family friend, who helped subsidize the printing costs, $17 of the $20 cover price goes directly to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. That could mean a donation of almost $34,000 if all the books sell.
“I prefer to say, ‘When all the books sell,’” laughs Eichers, who might even consider printing more.
“Mixing up Memories” can be purchased at Enchanted Forest or online at www.mixingupmemories com.

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