The Culinary Heritage Project
Ask Your Grandmother
- Purpose
- A youth oral-history format for preserving an elder’s food knowledge.
- Suitable setting
- Kitchen, living room, school quiet room, or courtyard.
- Suggested participants
- One elder, one or two young interviewers, optional host.
- Group size
- 2–4 people.
- Approximate format
- 30–60 minutes of listening. Write names as the elder says them.
- Host guidance
- The young person leads. The host only helps with the device and consent.
- Preservation prompts
- What did you eat as a child? Who taught you? What did you carry when you moved?
- Suggested interview questions
- How was it made? What must stay in the original language? What would you teach a grandchild?
- What to bring
- Nothing required. A photograph of the elder’s kitchen helps if they wish.
- KinDish contribution methods
- Speak first. Write names beside the recording. Upload a photo if offered.
- Privacy and consent
- The elder decides what is recorded and who may hear it. Stop when they ask.
- What knowledge this event tries to preserve
- Recipes, techniques, names of dishes and people, places of origin, substitutions.
- Expected archival outcome
- An elder’s words kept as the source, with a young person as interviewer on KinDish.