When you think about family legacies, I bet you think of jewelry, furniture, stories, picture albums, even.

What about recipes?  Your family recipes, handwritten and passed down verbally are very much a part of your family’s legacy.  They are your childhood, your comfort, your holiday memories and special occasions in tastes, smells, textures and flavors.

I cannot tell you how important it is to preserve this portion of your family’s legacy.  Their is a wealth of family information, history and memories to be shared along with these recipes. Where they came from, why they’re important…

Please, take the time to get these memories recorded, teach your children where the recipes came from, how they came to be a part of your family and what your favorite memories surrounding them are.

Five Ways To Use Recipes to Create Family Legacies

• Scan handwritten recipes, accompany the scanned recipes with family stories and compile into Holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Birthdays etc…) recipes books as gifts
• Go to a paint your own pottery place and create a Cookie or Pie Plate with your family’s favorite recipe on it and use it to serve that dish every year – this will become a favorite heirloom
• Sit down with your parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins (you get the idea) ask them to share their favorite recipe and memory that goes along with it/them – create a disc with pictures and stories of all of these memories and recipes on a site like blurb or paper coterie and send your family the link to purchase their own (or buy them as a gift as a surprise!)
• Friends.  Don’t forget your friends, they are as much a part of your family legacy and life history as those related to you by blood.  Share, Ask, Host a Recipe Swap and offer a downloadable e-book/pdf to everyone who attends.  You then become a part of their family legacy, too.
• Buy your favorite cookbook for your favorite family member, bookmark your favorite recipe, write a note about it and pass it on, ask them to pay it forward, too.

Cherish the rips, fingerprints, smudges, flour dustings and oil marks. Cherish the words and memories, tastes and smells.  Food is grounding and it is a wonderful way to create and share memories and family legacy