Organizing for America | Amy Hamblin's Blog: The Obama Family Cookbook

The Obama Family Cookbook

By Amy Hamblin - May 1st, 2008 at 7:07 pm EDT

Comments | Mail to a Friend | Report Objectionable Content

Maria from Missoula, MT, already had donated, called, canvassed and blogged. But she still wanted to give back more to the man who has given her hope when she thought it wasn't possible.

Given her limited income, Maria knew she had to be creative in her fundraising efforts. She has spent the last month compiling 160 recipes and the stories to go along with them from Barack supporters. After some editing help from her My.BarackObama friend, Susie from San Francisco, Maria posted the Obama Family Cookbook online. Anyone can access it through her blog and print the recipes, but she asks that you donate what you can.

I am a cookbook lover. I've always gone looking for unusual cookbooks from churches, schools. They're a tradition in rural America for fundraising...It's been so much fun compiling the recipes. I've gotten so many friends from it. It's a good cross-section of supporters. I got one from every state -- except for Utah -- and from the Virgin Islands, the Netherlands and England.

She's been too busy working and volunteering at the Missoula headquarters in her spare time to try out any of the recipes. She's hoping to make the barbecue pork recipe for everyone at the headquarters soon.

She dedicated the cookbook to her daughter, Carrie, who passed away two years ago from epilepsy. In her search online for more explanation behind her daughter's death, she stumbled upon a speech Barack gave to CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy) on March 11, 2005. She wrote her first blog post in February 2007 about how she "met" Barack:

[The speech] gave me some hope in finding a cure for the terrible disease, which robbed me of my child. What I am trying to say is, Mr. Obama's eloquent speech drew me in and comforted me during a most painful time in my life. Even his written words "speak" I have noticed.

Get more involved in our My.BarackObama community and meet other wonderful supporters like Maria. Write a blog post about what this campaign means to you, create a personal fundraising page and host a fundraiser.

Show 731 Reader Comments	Comments RSS
Comments are closed for this post.

Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.