How recipes die.

[Jamie (K)]

Here is the typical way Americans lose their family food traditions.

Grandma comes from the Old Country knowing how to make all kinds of wonderful dishes. As Mom is growing up, she learns to make them too. When Mom has her own children, everyone loves to go to grandma's for these delicious meals, cookies, pastries, etc., but Mom never makes them at home.

Soon the grandchildren realize that Grandma is getting old and is liable to die soon, or maybe Grandma has already died. The grandkids ask Mom to teach them to make some of these dishes, but they're so much work that Mom sighs, "Oh, you don't want to make that!" She tells the kids that they'll need to set aside one or two whole days to make these delicacies. The kids say okay, but they never seem to have the time.

Then Mom gets old and dies, and these dishes are lost from the family memory.

Sometimes the grandchildren are able to scavenge recipes from various places that tell how to make the dishes. They're usually not as much work as Mom said, maybe because the recipes have been simplified in the US.

Does anything like this happen in your country?

[Ralf]

[Jamie (K)]

[NinaZara]

We lose our recipes pretty much the same way. And one more thing I noticed, there are too many instant version of them in the supermarket, that people just don't bother to make the recipes the traditional way, no matter how much the taste is ten times better than the intant ones.