Banar Designs: The final week of "Great American Home Baking"

It's been almost a year since we started this project. It's finally done and we've learned so much. We had never done a cook book after more than 20 years of every kind of craft book that you could imagine. Food styling and food photography were new experiences- not to mention all the complications of cooking and recipes. Of course we had a very fine staff to help us. Four wonderful cooks, 5-6 recipe testers, 2 writers, and the best photographer in the world. I did the photo styling and Nancy did all the hard part of making sure the recipes were right. Some of them even had to be translated from foreign languages (including British English into American English) and European measurements into American measurements. I don't know why we don't all just use tried and true European measurements.

It's been a wonderful learning experience and I think we did a really good job. We started midway through the book and had to adapt our look to what came before. This was the hard part. (well one of them, anyway.) I couldn't always use the colors or props that I would have liked. But in the end it all worked out.