The gift of a great cookbook continues giving for years, decades, even generations. Think of the dog-eared, food-stained pages of your family’s favorite collections. At my house, Mom kept hers in a drawer right next to her precious recipe box. Eventually, the pages of her most treasured local cookbooks became brittle with age, but the recipes live on, some transferred to index cards or stored in computers. A number still make it to the table, cooked by her children, nieces or nephews.

Many isle cookbooks are written each year, and they are worth considering because you never know, one of those recipes may become the stuff of family tradition.

Here are a few representatives, found wherever books are sold:

“$266 Million Winning Lottery Recipes,” by Eddie Flores Jr., illustrated by Jon J. Murakami (Mutual Publishing, $9.95)

The title of this book refers to a winning ticket purchased in 2010 from an L&L restaurant in California.

Fans of the plate-lunch eatery will enjoy this collection of standard local recipes from L&L founder Flores, accompanied by comical drawings by Murakami, whose “Calabash” cartoon appears in the Star-Advertiser.

A gem in the book is the section on sauces, in which offers Flores’ take on teriyaki, katsu and tartar sauces, brown gravy and chili pepper water, plus his Hawaiian Barbecue and Lemon Chicken sauce recipes.

“Best of the Best from Hawai‘i Cookbook,” edited by Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley (Quail Ridge Press, $16.95)

To advance Quail Ridge Press’ mission to preserve the nation’s food heritage, McKee and Moseley delivered this installment in 2004, an extensive collection of classic and lesser-known isle recipes culled from 63 local cookbooks. It is now in its sixth printing.

Probably its finest contribution is the catalog of the source cookbooks at the back. Each listing offers a book synopsis, price and shipping cost.

“Hawai‘i’s Baby & Toddler Cookbook,” by Gwendolyn Trowbridge (Mutual Publishing, $15.95)

Trowbridge garnered recipes from Hawaii’s top chefs, including Roy Yamaguchi, Alan Wong, Bev Gannon and Ed Kenney, to offer up tasty ideas for the family’s youngest eaters.

While a few of the dishes are rather complicated, making it questionable whether a busy parent would attempt them, the collection is filled with others that are quick and easy. Many of these come from the author herself and her late mother’s recipe box.

“Celebrating Island Style,” by Wanda Adams (Island Heritage Publishing, $19.95)

This is the centerpiece of the lineup because Adams’ efforts to assemble this collection illustrate how relevant a cookbook can be, not just in terms of recipes but in documenting and preserving traditions.

Adams, a Star-Advertiser contributor, highlights Hawaii’s diverse holiday celebrations generated by the long list of cultures represented in the community.

Through some 100 recipes, the book covers Asian New Year’s traditions, Shrove Tuesday, May Day, Girls’ and Boys’ Days, the summer season, year-end holidays and birthday luau food.  

“We celebrate so many things here in Hawaii. … I thought it’s time to say, ‘Here’s the way we go through our year in Hawaii.’ And of course, food is at the center of these celebrations,” she said.

Adams haunted libraries to research holiday customs and scoured her vast collection of decades-old community cookbooks (she’s been an avid collector for many years) to select recipes that best reflect each occasion.

Because many were so old, she first had to interpret cooking directions and rewrite them for the modern kitchen.

Adams called on “pretty much every source I’ve got that I trust. I would get out the recipe, and they’d be, ‘First do this, then do that, then do the other thing,’” she said. “I’d call a Chinese grandfather and ask him if his mother made anything like (the recipe).”

Modernizing the recipes “was really all in the doing,” Adams said.

“Many of the cookbooks had great ideas, but they were absolutely from scratch. So I had to figure out what we could do that would not interfere with the integrity of the recipe.

“For example, if they needed ground pork in the past, they would take two cleavers and do a double-cleaver chopping technique. Today, could we use a food processor for this? No, that wouldn’t work well. Could we use ground pork from the store and chop it a little finer? Yes.

“The recipes were almost like mathematical problems to figure out, so I made most at least twice. A few took five or six times.”

Adams said she wanted the book to convey the cultural fluidity of Hawaii.

“The whole point is we don’t stay culturally defined here. Anyone from any culture can be cooking any of these foods.”

WATERMARK COOKBOOKS COME WITH DISH TOWELS Watermark Publishing offers gift sets that celebrate local culture with pairings of cookbooks and Cane Haul Road dish towels. “Kau Kau: Cuisine & Culture in the Hawaiian Islands,” by Arnold Hiura, a 2009 publication, comes with a “Kaukau Time” dish towel featuring various ethnic lunchboxes including a kau kau tin, bento box and Chinese takeout box. The set is presented in a pizza box with an assortment of crack-seed snacks for $40. Kapiolani Community College’s “A Splash of Aloha” seafood recipe collection is paired with a “She Sells Sashimi by the Seashore” towel ($18), and “The Hawaii Book of Rice: Tales, Trivia and 101 Great Recipes,” by Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi, from 2011, is perfectly paired with an “Ochazuke” towel ($20). Find them at these special events: >> Bess Press Warehouse Sale, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, 3565 Harding Ave. >> Downtown Holiday Book Fair, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Dec. 12, corner of King and Bishop streets >> Honolulu Gift Fair, 5 to 9 p.m. Dec. 14, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Dec. 15 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 16, Blaisdell Exhibition Hall