The Culinary Heritage Project
Family Memory Dinner
- Purpose
- Gather generations around one table and preserve the food memories connecting them.
- Suitable setting
- A home table, courtyard, or quiet rented room.
- Suggested participants
- Elders, parents, children, cousins. One host.
- Group size
- 4–12 people.
- Approximate format
- Shared meal, then 45–90 minutes of speaking and writing.
- Host guidance
- Prepare one dish that carries a story. Seat elders where they can be heard. Record only with consent.
- Preservation prompts
- Who first cooked this? What could not be substituted? What was on the table when someone left, arrived, or returned?
- Suggested interview questions
- What did this taste like in the house you remember? Whose hands taught yours? What must not be forgotten?
- What to bring
- A dish, a photograph, a handwritten recipe if you have one. Nothing is required.
- KinDish contribution methods
- Speak, write, or upload a photograph or recipe on KinDish.
- Privacy and consent
- Ask before recording. Private and family memories stay off the public archive unless the speaker chooses otherwise.
- What knowledge this event tries to preserve
- Family dishes, names, substitutions, who cooked, and the table around them.
- Expected archival outcome
- Spoken or written memories in KinDish, linked to this gathering. Originals remain the source.