On the classic television series “The Waltons,” the elderly Baldwin sisters zealously guarded their daddy’s popular “Recipe.” What they didn’t know was that it was actually moonshine! Does your family have family recipes even close to that interesting?
This holiday season, make the effort to gather your family’s cherished recipes, maybe some that have been passed down for decades. By collecting them, you can make sure that tradition keeps going for your children, grandchildren, and future generations. Doing this at a family holiday meal makes it a triple slam:
- There will be an activity to excite everyone’s interest
- You’ll be preserving part of your family’s history and teaching your children about their past
- You’ll have something to put together for Christmas or Hanukkah gifts
You’ll need to plan ahead, so here’s what to do in advance. If you have older children or teenagers, have them send out an email prior to the event (and include some reminders in the days right before). In the email, ask everyone to bring recipes to the holiday dinner—specifically, “heritage recipes.”
Great-grandma’s zucchini cake. The Dutch oven beef stew that Uncle Blaine cooked on family campouts. That favorite birthday cake and icing that Mom always makes—and that her mom made before her.
Gather the recipes when everyone arrives at the holiday meal, and encourage your family to reminisce about them. Make notes on the recipe: Whose dish was it? Are there stories associated with it being made? Was it someone’s particular favorite? Was it always served in a certain dish?
After the holiday, add some family history information to the recipes. You can look up birth and death dates on Ancestry and check census records for where relatives lived (“Aunt Sandie always made this casserole for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner when she lived at 8150 Fairfax Avenue in Woodburn, Massachusetts in the 1970s and ’80s”).
Did the dish come from another country? Do a quick online search, and then check immigration records on Ancestry: they might show when your ancestors came to this country and from where. Note what you learn in an introduction to the recipe with more information about its possible origins—the country, region, or even village where Great-Grandma may have gotten that recipe.
Assemble the recipes into a cookbook, make copies, and wrap them up for the next holiday gift-giving occasion.
What a gift to your family.
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