Hella Buchheim created Plate Full of Memories since one of her saddest regrets is the loss of most of the family food recipes of her childhood. She blames it on language differences since her grandmother never learned English and because many recipes were never written but handed down orally in the kitchen from mother to daughter.  She feels that her life has been severed in some way from her ancestors who served these foods at family celebrations and she wants to help others avoid the same loss. She realizes that it needs to be easy and still allow for family members to have full control throughout the process. That was her intention when creating A Plate Full of Memories so that it could be used with any cookbook making software or just using it to create your cookbook on your own computer.

As a Personal Historian, Hella, helps people document their life stories, she feels that the combination of recipes and stories were really not all that different. Her enthusiasm and knowledge of life story writing is revealed each month in her free monthly newsletter that you, too, can receive by emailing  hella@personalhistories101.com
 
“Erinnerung, Gedanken, Memories…Survival of the human spirit” her mother’s life story was her first published book.  She is currently working on two other commercial life stories, “A Mountaineer Boy’s Tale” with Yakao Yang and Questions I wish I Could Ask You about Paul Grueneberg, her grandfather.  Most of her clients are ordinary people who write about their extraordinary lives.