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Chronicle Your Life Story Blog

Fun things to do on Thanksgiving

Preserving family history through Thanksgiving recipes

As  discussed in previous posts, Thanksgiving can be the perfect time to gather and record family memories, through sharing family stories and pictures.  Another wonderful way to preserve family history is through family recipes.  Try asking everyone to bring their favorite family recipes to Thanksgiving dinner.  You could ask everyone to bring a favorite family Thanksgiving recipe, but really, Thanksgiving could just be the time to begin gathering any and all favorite family recipes.  Recipes could be old--from parents, grandparents and further back--or recipes can be ones your family enjoys right now, as preserving family history for the future means preserving the present as well.

Once you have the family recipes, you can copy and distribute them to all your family members.  There also are many other great options, though, for creating a professional looking Heirloom Cookbook.  In general, Heirloom Cookbooks include not only recipes.  They also can include pictures, stories, family trees--whatever you have that would tell your family stories.  Here are two sites that can help you get started:  www.heritagecookbook.com and www.platefullofmemories.com.

Following is a recipe for my mother-in-law's pie crust recipe, which she got from a friend, who inherited it from her mother.  My husband and children insist that this is the best pie crust ever!

For 2 crusts:

2 c sifted flour
4 heaping T Crisco
1/4 c orange juice
pinch of salt

Mix flour and Crisco in a bowl.  Add orange juice and salt.  Cut in half and refrigerate.  Then flour a board, roll out, and use with your favorite filling.


Chronicling Your Life Stories: More ideas for Thanksgiving

As we all have experienced, a picture (and I'll extend that to other visuals as well) can say a thousand words.

Another idea for Thanksgiving is to ask each guest to bring to Thanksgiving dinner a picture or any other item related to a memory they have of Thanksgiving--or to a family story about Thanksgiving.  For those people who don't have a picture or item related specifically to Thanksgiving, they can bring something related to the topic of giving thanks.  Dinnertime can then be a time to go around the table and have each person tell about the picture or item they brought.  Again, don't forget to have a camcorder or audio recorder going if possible--or at least someone taking notes--because  during this exercise you'll be sharing memories, but making them as well.

And don't worry if there are guests at the dinner who are not family.  It's a fun way to learn more about friends and their families as well.

Below is a Thanksgiving "visual" that I plan to share this year.  I found it when I was cleaning out one of my drawers. It's a note that my youngest daughter gave to me and my husband at Thanksgiving, when she was 6 years old.  She's 23 now.