A great project is to get down treasured family recipes, along with the photos and memories of the people who made as a gift for the next generation.
I’ve started a new project for Christmas presents this year: I’m creating “Recipe and Memory” books for my two grown daughters (who hopefully aren’t reading this particular posting) and my brothers’ families.
I got the idea when my daughters were home over the summer – and wanted to write down all the recipes of their favorite foods. Later, I decided to go “one better” and to integrate the recipes with the memories and create a food diary to span the generations.
There were so many recipes that our family enjoyed and always “had to have” when we all got together for the holidays or for a family party. As older relatives have died, some of our most cherished dishes have died along with them. I don’t want that to keep happening.
I want my children and my nieces and nephews to seat these recipes in their culinary repertoire with their stories and family memories of former generations intact. One of the reasons that I’m not that interested genealogy is because names on charts bear little resemblance to living breathing people. But Aunt Rose’s “fish” cookies or Daisy’s chili sauce…that’s another matter entirely. When I make “their” dishes, I remember them.
And so, I’m making this book, filled with recipes and stories, scanned photos of dishes and of the people we all associate them with.
I’m the last person to explain how to do a craft project – trust me on this one – but, if you do one for your family, it could be as simple as collecting old photos, writing “their” recipes on the back of them and putting them into a big box - or as elaborate as using a graphic design program and actually laying out and binding a book. What’s important is that it gets done.
