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What have you done to safeguard your recipes and hand them down to future generations?

Posted by app • 8/27/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: cooking, Culture, death, family, recipes, tradition

We all know at least one family (maybe yours) that was affected by a death of a loved one that took all their recipes to their grave with them.

Have you thought about making arrangements to ensure that your recipes will live on after you are gone?

Have you thought about how it would affect your family if you didn't?

Have you thought about how devistating it would be to your family's culture and traditions if a fire destroyed your home, and took all your recipes with it?

If you have made arrangements, what are they? And if you haven't, why not?

cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2008/08/when-grandma-died-she-took-her.html

User Comments

8/27/08

MidwestMom

Honestly, this issue is one of the prime reasons I am saving our family recipes on my recipe blog.
allsecretrecipes.blogspot.com

In the last decade, we have had several family members in their 80's and 90's pass away. It is always a task to try and search for those worn pieces of paper or overstuffed recipe boxes to find the cherished recipes.

I had a friend whose grandmother passed away in 1986. She is *still* translating a hand-written recipe journal in German.

So, it is a real issue that I'm not sure too many people recognize. Good for you, though for writing about it!

Best, MM

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8/27/08

blogonsmog

Well - I'm the worst cook alive so I destroy all my recipes so that there will be a next generation. I'm sure my family is devastated

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1. 8/27/08
  
  MidwestMom
  
  At least you have the mask to filter out the smoke odor...
2. 8/27/08
  
  blogonsmog
  
  (hehehe!) And I have the courage to admit what i am not good at.
8/27/08

kirewass

Well, I have taken care of that. I am publishing all my recipes to both a Swedish and an English blog. A couple of years ago I published a lot of old family photos and old picture post cards on a blog too.

In English: minareceptsamlingar.blogspot.com
In Swedish: favoritrecept.blogspot.com
In Swedish: gammaltochnytt.blogspot.com

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1. 8/27/08
  
  MidwestMom
  
  I've seen your blog and loved it. Good job -- so glad you're posting those recipes.
8/27/08

kirewass

Thanks MidwestMom.
My mother took many of her recipes to her grave with her, you see. It was a pity that she didn't write down all of them.

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1. 8/27/08
  
  MidwestMom
  
  Isn't it so true that the best ones are the ones that we don't measure and that come straight from our memories? To this day my family will talk about old recipes wistfully, because they are lost.
8/27/08

ender

already blogged the only family recipe worth saving ...

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8/27/08

Anniepooh

This is the reason I began blogging. I also asked my family to send recipes that they never wanted to lose and I put them all together in a webpage for us all to access.

Oh, and mom gave me boxes of recipes from family. I also have hand-written recipes from my great-grandma and have blogged a few.

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8/28/08

app

I originally started my recipe blog when my daughter moved out and started calling me up for various recipes. I figured it would be easier if I just posted them online than if I tried to explain over the phone.

And it was better than email because she couldn't delete it by mistake and have to bug me again later. Plus I could also pass the links to friends and share them.

It wasn't till later on that I thought of how important that blog could be to my family.

There also seems to currently be one of my recipe notebooks missing and it contains almost 25 years worth of Christmas cookie experiments. I have been frantically looking for it in my house, and when I find it, I am sitting down and typing them all to my blog and not going to stop for a break till it's done.

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1. 8/28/08
  
  MidwestMom
  
  Good for you! We *love* Christmas Cookies -- they are a big deal for my family. In our case, we have relatives from Italy who made some complicated recipes... It's best to have them written down.
  
  A year ago I was coordinating a Holiday Party at my sons' school. I suggested that families who wanted to bring in refreshments bring in their favorite Christmas cookie. Ours were delicious, delicate and beautiful. The other three families brought in storebought chocolate chip or sugar cookies. I was crestfallen.
  
  If Christmas cookies are your tradition, keep it and pass it on! I never realized it was a rare thing!
8/28/08

Profitimo

keeping them online is a good idea.:-)

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8/28/08

app

@MidwestMom:

Maybe you should be happy they supplied store bought stuff. They could have been saving themselves a lot of embarrassment. You never know how bad it could have been if they tried to do it themselves.

When I was a kid, most mothers stayed at home and very few had jobs outside the home. They had plenty of time to cook and bake and learn how to do it right. Time is pretty much all they had and hobbies like cooking & sewing was what they filled all that free time with.

Christmas parties and birthdays were an occasion for all mothers to show off and send their children to school with stuff that exceeded the quality of what you would find in the finest bakeries. It was almost a competition with them, and most mothers gained a reputation for something special.

Nobody sent their kids to school with chocolate cupcakes or chocolate chip cookies. It was too common and wouldn't stand out. Plus there was a risk that some other mother would send the same item and the kids would eat one and the rest would go to waste.

But times have changed and most mothers have jobs now and not as much time or desire to cook or bake. Most will order pizza and have it delivered to the classroom, or buy cupcakes from a bakery, or Munchkins from Dunkin Donuts. And some of the few that are baking, shouldn't be.

When my daughter was younger, I had to bake, because the stuff that was sent in by the few mothers that did bake was usually just plain awful. Most of it was burnt chocolate cupcakes I wouldn't feed to a dog. If there was going to be anything edible that my daughter could eat, I was going to have to supply it myself.

But I was a stay at home mom, so my skills had been practiced plenty before my daughter started school. Most mothers today don't have the same luxury.

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1. 8/28/08
  
  MidwestMom
  
  Good point.
  
  What was funny for me was that I *presumed* that "christmas cookies" was something universal.
  
  It turns out that our tradition, common where I grew up in a very "first generation American" community is quite uncommon here.
  
  (The kids ate all the cookies anyway and LOVED them, regardless of where they came from.)
8/28/08

timethief

Absolutely nothing so thanks for the prodding. I'm just beginning to collect family recipes from my extended family and I have joined your 'hood.

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8/28/08

Anok

I put them in a cookbook, silly

I have recipes from four generations of women on my mother's side.

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8/28/08

Bayho

haha my mom does not know how to cook for the life of her. Me and my brothers and sisters all grew up on fast food so she wont be passing down any recipes after she dies. I think I'll learn to cook so i can start some recipes of my own and eventually pass then down to my kids when I'm all old and what not .

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10/10/08

SortinItAllOut

My Grandmother passed away leaving a recipe box full of wonderful, handwritten recipes. The problem is, the meals I remember eating are not written down in her box! She must have had them in her mind. If I had known this I would have asked her about them long ago.

I have started a recipe blog sharing/storing all of her recipes that I do have, and my dad has suggested putting all of the children's and grandchildren's recipes up there too.

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10/10/08

wehireu

My grandmother keeps them in a little metal box with each recipe on an index card in alphabetical order. They have been copied already by other family members.

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10/10/08

hadrian1407

That is why I made numerous blogs about food recipes...One reason is to keep most of the family's fave food + additional modifications and other similar recipes so that later generation can look into.

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12/28/08

ShawGirl

Like everyone else responded, this very question is the reason I started blogging. I would come up with these dishes and then for the life of me couldn't recreate them. So I started writing them down but would lose the notebooks I put them in. I became friends with a guy who had a food blog and that's when I started my own. Eventually I will have the recipes I put on the blog made into a cookbook to hand down.

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12/28/08

Jeunelle

Excellent Question
I laminate mine because it protect them from getting flour, lard and fingerprints all over the recipe
after years of excessive use.
I also place them all in a steel protected case, under lock.
My Mother tried to steal some of my recipes and she fails to return them, then later looses them
from her many moves over the years.
I still can't get any from my Grandmother who insist on locking herself in the kitchen, I have no idea what the hell she's doing in there but the end result is delicious.

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12/29/08

jjmezzio

I think my mother listed all of them in a book.

But every sibling knows how to cook well and each of us knows how to cook family's secret recipes etc.

My parents particularly my mother taught us how to cook.

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