Bonus Question: What’s a Recipe Our Family Has Always Made?

Every family has one. The cranberry fluff that shows up every November. The soup someone makes the second anyone sniffles. The cookies nobody else’s grandma makes quite the same way.

Sometimes the recipe lives on a stained index card with a thumbprint of butter in the corner. Sometimes it only lives in someone’s memory, and the measurements are “a handful” and “until it looks right.”

In Susan’s family, it’s Aunt Jane’s dinner rolls. Every Thanksgiving, the whole clan gathers at the beach. The menu has shifted over the years (someone always goes rogue with the carrots), but the rolls never change. Aunt Jane has been making them for decades, and for the past several years she’s been teaching the grandchildren and cousins, never fussing over wonky shapes or overworked dough. This year, the kids are making them on their own, with Aunt Jane supervising. Wherever they end up spending future Thanksgivings, they’ll be able to make her rolls and think of her. You can read Susan’s whole story and download Aunt Jane’s recipe here.

That’s what we’re after this week. Ask for your family’s recipe. Then write it down together on our printable recipe card which has room for the ingredients, the steps, a picture, and the most important line of all: From the kitchen of.… That’s where you write who taught it to you.

How to use the card

• Let your child do the asking. Grandparents (and aunts, and old family friends) tend to tell the story behind the recipe when a child is the one who wants to know. You’ll probably hear the story of the disastrous Thanksgiving of 1987.
• Divide the work by age. Younger kids can draw a picture of the dish while a grown-up writes. Older kids can write it themselves, spelling and all. The wobbly handwriting is the part everyone will treasure later.
• Far-away grandparent? Use the phone. It works just as well. Put them on speaker, keep a pencil handy, and let your child repeat back each step so you both catch it.
• Then cook it together, soon. Don’t let the card go in a drawer. A recipe tastes different once you know whose it is.

Each page has two cards, so print a few and cut along the dotted line. One for your kitchen, and maybe one to send back to the person who taught it to you.

[Download the recipe card printable]

Tell us what’s on your card. We’d love to hear which recipe your family has always made! Or better yet, tag us in the process on social @sparkle_stories.

Looking for some stories to help get into the cooking and baking mood? We have 65+ stories all about that in our Cooking & Baking Topic here.

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