In this internet age, millions of users share recipes, cooking methods, and plating tips on social media. Over a century ago, however, writes Jessica Stoller-Conrad for the National Public Radio, food enthusiasts shared their cooking secrets through community cookbooks.  These modest cookbooks, known as community cookbooks, were published for certain causes such as to fundraise, to preserve treasured recipes, and to raise visibility for a cause.

We would like to feature several recent cookbooks, from organizations that we have been in touch with. They are not coffee table books with glossy papers and fancy food images, rather they are cookbooks with recipe collections from communities that care.

Last year, a few months before the World Food Day, we received an email from the Wheat Communications Officer at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The Center works to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat systems and thus ensure global food security and reduce poverty.

In June it started running a nutrition campaign to highlight the nutritional benefits of maize and wheat. CIMMYT asked its betwork members and social-media followers to share their favorite healthy recipe scontaining wheat and/or maize. These contributions are now compiled in “A Grain a Day” recipe book, published to coincide with World Food Day celebrated on October 16.

“A Grain a Day” is an opportunity to shed light on the important role maize and wheat play in global nutrition and to celebrate the dietary value of these food staples. Globally, an estimated 800 million people do not get enough food to eat and more than 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiency, or “hidden hunger,” according to U.N. food agencies. Measures to ensure an adequate supply of vital micronutrients include: diet diversification, nutritional education, supplementation and biofortification.

We happily sent a recipe of Gorontalo traditional corn soup from Indonesia called binthe biluhuta. Each recipe in the collection is introduced with a short story before coming to its ingredients and methods. As an example, arepas colombianas is made from ground corn dough or flour, come both in circular and semi-flat shapes, and are popular in Colombia, Panama and Venezuela.

The crowd-sourced final product is a 30-page e-cookbook with 45 recipes from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America and can be accessed here.

The Indonesian Food Blogger Group (IDFB) aims at uniting Indonesian food bloggers who reside in many countries of the world and to promoting Indonesian cuisine abroad. Currently the IDFB Facebook Group has more than 14,000 members.

It has a unique way to keep their members active in preserving Indonesian foods and beverages by regularly organizing IDFB challenges. Based on a theme, members post the food they cook or a drink they prepare. They have two months to create and post, before voting for the best posts eligible for interesting prizes. As such the IDFB has been summarizing and disseminating knowledge and experience in the world of cooking, photographing and writing.

In one of the challenges, the IDFB in collaboration with Omar Niode Foundation and a yogurt brand invited its members to create recipes with singkong (cassava) and yogurt as basic ingredients. One purpose of convening this challenge is to celebrate Cassava Day, an effort to encourage people to make use of local food since it will increase food diversification in an effort to support food security in Indonesia. Cassava used may be fresh cassava, cassava flour or fermented cassava, while the yogurt is from a certain brand or plain yogurt.

Members posted their recipes, creations, and photos of the finished products on their blogs. Entries came from various cities in Indonesia and from foreign countries like the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and New Caledonia with diverse foodstuffs such as breads, cakes, cookies, traditional snacks, pancakes, entrees, pies & tart, puddings and drinks.

The 63-page e-cookbook, mostly in Bahasa Indonesia, can be downloaded here. It contains 41 recipes collected during the Challenge, with a description of the ingredients, how to make, photographs, and some notes, all of which are published as a token of appreciation for all members and administrators of the Indonesian Foodblogger Group.

Visit.org is a technology platform, an online marketplace, for curated, immersive and impactful travel experiences offered by nonprofits around the globe. Its mission is to enhance the mission of great social organizations, called org, and increase public knowledge of and engagement with society's needs by facilitating mutually-beneficial, in-person encounters between people and communities around the world.

The start-up company summarizes the impact of its activities as enhancing the missions of great orgs, public education, and economic development. Currently there are hundreds of tours organized by around 275 partner organizations across more than 40 countries listed on visit.org with descriptions that make you want to visit the destinations right away.

In the spirit of making the global community feels just a bit smaller, visit.org offers a collection of recipes from its grassroots, community-based partner organizations around the globe. Initially, the cookbook is a token of gratitude for donors that helped make visit.org crowdsourcing campaign a successful one.

Visit.org says that a cookbook is chosen not just because food is significant in differing cultures, but also because dinner is time of togetherness and shared communion in every culture. The cookbook inspires readers to travel to and explore other countries, and reminds ourselves that there’s a whole world out there to explore with unique sounds, sights, and flavors. This week visit.org will officially launch ‪#‎MoreThanATourist‬ campaign to celebrate immersive, local travel experiences.

The 33-page cookbook that is available here has 12 recipes, with information about the region where the recipe comes from, about the partner organization, about the tour, about the dish, ingredients and how to make the local delicacy.

Manti, a dish from Sary Mogol Community in Kyrgyzstan, for example, is meat or lamb dumpling with onions and potatoes. Travelers to the area will experience one of a kind scenic trip in Pamir mountains, sandstone walls and waterfall with spectacular scenic views. What is more important, booking a tour through visit.org will help Sary-Mogol Community Cooperative in assisting local people to earn sustainable living as guides, horseback riders or servers in guesthouses and yurts.

Community cookbooks, especially those with causes as illustrated by the three books in this blog post are bundles of treasured recipes with historical and cultural values. Such treasures will become fascinating keepsakes cherished by future generations.

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Text: Amanda Niode.

Cover Image: Gina Sanders/123rf.com. All other images: Omar Niode Foundation, CIMMYT, Visit.org.