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Let’s make genealogy a thing of the past
You’ll never eradicate the need for tracing your ancestors’ history. But you can ensure that the next generation will NOT need to search, scour, recreate, or imagine your own generation’s experience. Let's make genealogy a thing of the past for the next generation.
What we should be doing to make the genealogical quest easier—or nonexistent—for the next generation.
Everyone’s a genealogist.
Family history is a booming business. Television programs such as Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are—part treasure hunt, part reality-TV at its most personal—use celebrities as a hook, but they ultimately tap into our deepest desires for connection and pedigree.
Genealogy has been transformed by technology and science. On the tech side, the Internet has made discovering archival documents including census records, birth and death certificates, and ship manifests easier than ever. And on the science side, DNA analysis is now accessible to the masses, relatively cheap and certainly easy to obtain. As a result, more and more people are making strides uncovering their family history through sites such as Ancestry and FamilySearch, among many others.
Researching your family tree takes time—and is rife with brick walls.
Memes among genealogy buffs poke fun at the addictive nature of researching one’s family tree, and the elusiveness of stories than shed light on one’s ancestors.
Brick walls, names with variant spellings, destroyed records, and incorrectly transcribed documents are just a few of the common problems the questing family historian encounters.
And yet…
Do you want to leave a family mystery for the next generation?
And yet, while many folks get lost in the past, uncovering clues and clicking on those alluring green hint leaves, they never bother to create a paper trail or an archive of stories for their own ancestors. Do we all want to leave a mystery for the next generation? Do you think that spending hours in local libraries and municipal archives searching for your great-grandparents is fun?
Maybe, sure. It is fun—especially when you discover something unexpected, or when you finally score a photo of a long-lost relative.
But wouldn’t it be abundantly more rewarding (and time-efficient!) to have been left a book of your families’ stories, complete with captioned photographs that identify the subjects and documents that reveal their path to the present?
Many people catch the genealogy bug when a parent or other family elder dies and leaves a handful of mysterious documents that ultimately require further research. Why were they saved? What will they lead to?
Imagine discovering not just a file of mysterious papers or a drawer full of dusty, unlabeled family photos, but a thoughtful history of your family? How great would it be to be handed down a full genealogical record? Even better, a series of stories that showcase your ancestors’ personalities, struggles, and journeys?
How you can help make genealogy a thing of the past.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Genealogy will be around forever; and the further back one successfully traces one’s roots, the further back yet one still wants to go! Meaning: You’ll never eradicate the need for tracing your ancestors’ history. But you can ensure that the next generation will NOT need to search, scour, recreate, or imagine your own generation’s experience.
Leave them records. Most importantly, leave them stories. Share your knowledge. Be generous with your wisdom and your time (sharing your stories can be one of the most rewarding things you do in life, after all!).
Would you like to preserve your memories and leave a complete family history for your children? Here are a few simple ways to get started (admittedly, some more fun than others):
1 Sort your photos.
Depending on the sheer volume of your family photos, this may be an enjoyable endeavor or a dreaded chore. If it seems daunting, set aside a corner of a room for the project so you can leave the mess accessible and revisit your organizing when the mood strikes. Ask your family members to pitch in.
Archival photo storage boxes such as this are a great way to store your family photos long-term, but consider simply using piles and sticky notes during the organization phase.
2 Label your photos.
You don’t have to label every picture. (Professional genealogists might disagree with this approach, but I want you to get started, and being realistic is key to that, in my opinion.) Use a photo-safe pen, plug in metadata for your digital images, or use a trustworthy digital app to record details. The most important thing is labeling at least some of the pictures with your family’s full names, spelled correctly and written legibly; along with place names and event details if you have them (what was the occasion for the photograph? where was it taken? how old were the subjects?).
3 Digitize your photos.
I recommend hiring a professional to scan your photos. If you do it yourself, make sure to scan at a minimum of 300dpi (higher for much smaller photos you may want to enlarge later). The best thing about using a professional photo organizer, in my opinion, is that your photos will be accessible—not a jumble of unidentifiable files named IMG_1983 and IMG_5910. What good is a hard drive full of photos if you can’t find the ones you want when you want them?
4 Talk about your childhood.
Around the dinner table, on long car drives, over the phone. At family reunions, yes, but in everyday scenarios, too. Sharing stories helps us raise resilient, emotionally happy children, and it’s rewarding. You may roll your eyes when recalling your own grandfather’s tales of “back in the day, I had to walk to school…”—but I bet you do so with a gleam in your eye and a tingle down your spine. Help develop a family lore—or, as Bruce Feiler calls it, a “family narrative.”
5 Write your stories.
Whether you keep a journal or write in one of the myriad family memory-keeping books available in bookstores, just do it! Scribble two sentences a day if that's all you have time for, or set aside an hour every Sunday to contemplate your past. Whatever your approach, I guarantee whatever you write will be cherished by those you love.
6 Organize your documents.
If you’re anything like me, your birth certificate was filed at one point, but after the passport needed renewal, well, I’m not quite sure where I left it. When my mother passed away, I was meticulous with the record-keeping—but now those files contain a wealth of papers that can be tossed, and they’re all mixed up with her vital documents I’d like to preserve (and I DON”T want to leave this entire box as a burden to my own child one day). This is admittedly a big—unappealing—organization project, one of those critical things that remains on my to-do list…but I vow to join you in GETTING THIS DONE. Let’s do it.
7 Find your family stories.
Did your parents or grandparents leave behind a journal? Do you have a stash of letters amidst your family heirlooms? Maybe you or your spouse kept diaries or scrapbooks as children. Even your ancestor’s handwritten recipe file may be a wonderful trove of stories worth handing down. And photos are undoubtedly one of the best memory prompts.
Gather those precious keepsakes, and go through them. They’ll provide fodder for story-sharing with your kids, and spark memories you’d thought long forgotten. Consider digitizing the most important and meaningful items, whether yourself with a phone app or by a professional.
This Royal Albert teacup is lovely, sure, but I saved just one of my mother's set after she passed away so I could commune with her in my memories over tea. I photographed it and recorded its stories, too—yes, this teacup holds plenty of vivid stories, and I'm sure your family heirlooms do as well.
8 Record the provenance of your family heirlooms.
We’re talking the 3-dimensional kind of heirlooms here—think jewelry, a watch, furniture, a set of china dinnerware. Not everything will be worth saving or passing on to the next generation, of course, but for those things that you consider worthy, fill out a simple tag with vital information (Hannah Bergen Heirlooms offer beautiful ones). When the time comes, your kids and their kids will have all they need to fairly consider whether or not they want to bring those ugly dishes that hold “sentimental value” into their homes!
Without realizing it, you’ve set the stage for a beautiful family heirloom book.
If you’ve done all of the above, then you’ve no doubt come to value your own family stories and respect the need to preserve them for future generations. What you might not have realized is that you’ve also gathered most of the materials you need for creating a genuinely unique family heirloom.
Would you like to see how we could honor your stories in a bespoke book? With all the legwork done, taking the next step is easy…and hopefully inevitable.
If you're just getting started on preserving your family's stories and lineage, why not print this page and check things off as you go? Sometimes just having a reminder can help set us on the right path.
Congratulations on taking the first step in creating your own legacy!
#genealogy #lifestories #memoriesmatter #familyhistory #familyphotos #storytelling
One Word: Remember
#remember That’s it: Remember. One word. One hashtag. One very important prompt. Help us transform #ThrowbackThursday into a mindful act of remembering, and inspire everyone around you to share their stories, too.
It’s a new year, a time for resolutions and reflections.
I’m not big on resolutions. In my mind, if it’s good enough to want to do, it’s good enough to want to do NOW (whenever that may be).
Reflections, though…yeah, I’m big on those.
As I’ve written about before, there are plenty of substantive reasons for wanting to preserve and share your family stories, from helping to raise more resilient children to supporting adults with dementia.
But let’s be real: You don’t need a reason to preserve your family stories.
You know you want to.
In the spirit of making it easier—and fun—to share your memories, we’re launching a new movement on social media:
#remember
That’s it: Remember.
One word. One hashtag. One very important prompt.
Remember something from your own childhood that makes you smile. Remember something meaningful a loved one did for you. Remember that advice your parents gave you as a child—maybe you rolled your eyes then, but you cherish it now.
Every week we’ll give you a new prompt of what to remember.
It's more than just remembering, though.
The most important thing is that you don’t just remember it passively, alone with your thoughts. You must share your memory, tell your story. With an old family photo. With two sentences of reflection. Or with a full-blown story.
Share it with your co-workers over lunch. Share it with your friends—in real life, not just via text. And share it with the world on social media.
It’s one thing to remember: We relive our memories and are transported back in time. It’s another thing entirely to remember together: We are heard, validated, CONNECTED.
Help us transform #ThrowbackThursday into a mindful act of remembering, and inspire everyone around you to share their stories, too.
#Remember today: Mom and me.
Let's start today! Your prompt: Mom and me.
It's as simple as that: Share a photo and a brief memory about some time spent with your mom.
I've done so above, sharing one of my favorite family photos of my mother Lillian on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ. You can find it shared on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, too, just so you can see how easy it is!
Just choose where you want to share your memory, then do it.
You may want to copy and paste the following hashtags, or come up with your own. Just remember to tag friends and family who you think will appreciate your shared story—chances are, they'll comment with their own memories, making the process all the more special!
#remember #memoriesmatter #familyphotos #savefamilyphotos #legacy #modernheirloombooks #familystories #littlelifestories #throwbackthursday #tt
We'd love it is you tag Modern Heirloom Books, too, so we can relish your memories, comment, and share as well!
On Twitter, we're @heirloombooks
On Instagram, tag us at @modernheirloom
And on Facebook, we're @modernheirloombooks
The Potato Chip Effect: You can't share just one story.
Remembering is the first step in preserving your memories for your children and for future generations.
Sharing just one memory and one photo is the first step on a road to gathering your personal stories. One memory becomes two, becomes three, and then becomes…a chapter. Keep remembering, keep sharing, and your heart will swell with emotion…and your stories may one day equal a book.
Learn about what makes a Modern Heirloom Book different.
Explore related stories:
Google’s new app: Great way to preserve your old photos before they fade away
The new Google PhotoScan app allows users to digitally capture their old family photos with ease—and without glare. While the app isn't ideal for scanning high-resolution images for use in print, it has enormous value in quickly and effectively scanning those precious boxes of old family photos you—and your extended family members—have lying around your homes. See why it's a recommended download.
The new Google PhotoScan app allows users to digitally capture their old family photos with ease—and without glare.
Maybe you’ve got boxes or drawers full of old photographs you inherited from your parents. Or perhaps you have just a handful of cherished, dog-eared black-and-white pictures representing your entire family history. No matter how many of those old physical family photos you have, their quality is being eroded by the mere passage of time. With PhotoScan, Google has made preserving those pictures easier—and better—than ever.
The standalone app (available on iOS and Android), rolled out by Google on Tuesday along with added functionality to Google Photos, allows you to scan your printed photos in seconds, glare-free.
It’s as simple as placing your image on a flat surface and aiming your phone’s camera at the picture—you then capture four dots on your screen, kind of like a game. “Each time you capture one of those dots, the app is capturing an image of the print underneath,” said Julia Winn, a product manager for PhotoScan. “Then we take all those images, stack them on top of one another so that they are perfectly aligned, and throw out any pixels that are bright white and are not in common between the four images—those are glare.”
Machine learning technology also crops out the background, straightens uneven corners and photo edges, and does minor color enhancement to restore faded color—leaving you with a scan of the original that is significantly better quality than if you had taken a picture of it with your phone.
This is not a solution for family memory-keepers who want to eventually print family photos in a book or make enlargements to hang on the wall. Quality depends on the device used to perform the scan as well as the quality of the original, but it will never be sufficient for that kind of use. At a Google press event in Manhattan on Tuesday, I was impressed with the quality of printouts from scanned images, but note that they were all printed approximately the same size as the original photo.
PhotoScan, though, is the best option I have found for preserving a lot of old photographs quickly and sharing them easily. And that is something I urge everyone to do!
Since scanning photos with traditional scanners takes time, and since many people are reluctant to part with their photos temporarily to utilize a third-party digitizing service, risking loss and damage, too many people are doing nothing with their precious family photos. But those photos are indeed fading physically, not to mention fading from our memories as they sit neglected in that box.
Download the free Google PhotoScan app if you want to:
scan photos (even framed ones) at a relative’s home this Thanksgiving
easily get a stash of #ThrowbackThursday posts onto your phone
share childhood photos among siblings and extended family members easily
Google Photos has made sharing albums with anyone easier than ever.
One of the main draws of Google Photos as a primary photo management tool, in my opinion, is the functionality of its shared albums. Once you create an album, Google Photos allows you to invite friends via email, text message, or through Google Photos directly to add photos and caption information to the shared album. Your contacts are accessible through the app, and recipients receive notification and a link to the album via whatever contact method you choose.
Your contacts automatically load from your device into the Google Photos interface, making sharing across platforms simple.
So if you went to a graduation party or on vacation and five different individuals took photos, gather them all together in a shared album. Anyone who is invited can add photos, even if they are not a Google Photos user.
Why not create an album for different sides of your family, and begin creating a photo library of past generations? By inviting cousins and extended family members to contribute, you just might be surprised what photographic gems you’ll discover when they add pictures from their own collections!
Yes, PhotoScan is worthwhile even if you plan on having an heirloom book made.
While the scans from Google PhotoScan are not of a high enough quality for high-end print production, going through the exercise of gathering your family photos, identifying your favorites, and particularly inviting others to share their own snapshots with you, is a great first step in conceiving your book.
Some pictures might spark memories and elicit a favorite, once forgotten, family story.
Your great aunt Marilyn might scan in a photo of your mother in all her hippie splendor…or your father in his Catholic school uniform you’d never seen…or you at the age of one with that bowl haircut you forgot all about…
Beginning to catalog your family photos digitally will help an editor begin to see themes and understand what types of images she will have access to when creating your book (though you will need to gather originals for high-resolution scanning to occur for print purposes down the road).
There were various vintage cameras around the demo areas at Google's recent press event. Remember those cube-shaped flash bulbs for the Kodak Instamatic?
Conclusion?
Google PhotoScan is a must-download, free app that you will be glad to have on your phone the next time you come across an old family photo.
Whether or not you use Google Photos to organize your photo library, the PhotoScan app is a useful tool in your family history, genealogy, or memory-keeping arsenal.
Just don't forget: The resulting scans will not be suitable for enlarging prints or using in a high-end print book.
What you can learn from Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper
You might be surprised to learn what Anderson Cooper calls “the most valuable year of my life.” It's the period when he and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt maintained an email correspondence that delved deep—into the feelings they had previously not spoken about, and into their experiences both shared and wholly individual. The back-and-forth format of questions and stories is engaging, and most meaningful in its sense of discovery, of a grown man coming to know his mother in wonderful new ways. Why not be inspired to follow in their conversational footsteps?
I recently finished reading The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss (HarperCollins 2016) by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt. Do I recommend this book? Sure I do—it's chock full of details about these celebrities' lives, and in particular accounts of young Gloria's early years read like high fiction. But it's not the drama and inside scoop that endear this book to me; it's the naturally unfolding "getting-to-know-you" that happens between mother and son.
Cooper and his mother undertook an extended email conversation, one in which they were able to—finally—explore deep emotions and speak of tragedies of which they had previously chosen to remain silent. Vanderbilt's words are poetic, ripe with passion, honesty, and resilience. Cooper's questions are probing, and raw in their search for an understanding not only of his mother, but of the impact their relationship and experiences have had on him as a person.
“[Even as adults] we don’t often explore new ways of talking and conversing, and we put off discussing complex issues or raising difficult questions,” Cooper writes. “We think we’ll do it one day, in the future, but life gets in the way, and then it’s too late.”
“I didn’t want there to be anything left unsaid between my mother and me, so on her ninety-first birthday I decided to start a new kind of conversation with her, a conversation about her life. Not the mundane details, but the things that really matter, her experiences that I didn’t know about or fully understand....”
And what a gift these two gave to one another! Check this book out from the library, or better yet, buy it for yourself. I hope you may be inspired to embark upon your own extended conversation (theirs was via email over the course of a year) with a parent or other loved one.
“If not now, when?”
Why not...start an extended email conversation with your parents to discover the experiences that shaped them?
Anderson Cooper did. And it resulted in the most meaningful year of his life.
Of course you can open a wonderful dialogue with a loved one by writing good old-fashioned letters (and who doesn't love getting a hand-written letter!), but email is by far a more expedient way to communicate—and one that may be easier to turn into your own keepsake book later, should that idea appeal.
“The most valuable year of my life”
Not sure your mother or father would find such an exchange worthwhile? Perhaps give them the book. Or just bite the bullet and express your desire to get to know them better: Simply ask.
Vanderbilt was new to email at the time she began this endeavor with her son, but despite some initial reservations, her written correspondence matured and deepened over the course of the year they wrote to one another. And I can almost guarantee that once the floodgates are open—and each of you is able to see how deeply affected you are by the other's insights and memories—the richer the experience will become.
As Cooper writes:
“It’s the kind of conversation I think many parents and their grown children would like to have, and it has made this past year the most valuable of my life. By breaking down the walls of silence that existed between us, I have come to understand my mom and myself in ways I never imagined.
I know now that it’s never too late to change the relationship you have with someone important in your life: a parent, a child, a lover, a friend. All it takes is a willingness to be honest and to shed your old skin, to let go of the longstanding assumptions and slights you still cling to.”
I hope this book, or even just the idea of it, will encourage you to think about your own relationships and perhaps help you start a new kind of conversation with someone you love.
After all, if not now, when?
Don’t rely on social media to save your photo memories
Your memories matter too much to lose them to some virtual void. Here's why Facebook and Instagram are NOT the places to save your precious photos.
Enjoy photos on social media now—just don't rely on those platforms to preserve your pictures for posterity!
To reiterate the headline: Don’t rely on social media to save your photo memories! That’s a big N-O in my book: Relying on Facebook or Instagram to safeguard your precious images and memories is shortsighted.
I am active on various social media platforms, including those I mention; they are great for connecting, venting, passing the time on a commute. They are wonderful platforms for sharing pictures of your family’s favorite moments (I do love such everyday history!) and capturing tidbits we might otherwise forget (from that thing you couldn’t believe your 3yo just uttered to the quote posted near the Starbucks register).
But think about this:
Facebook was never intended as a place to store your photos. A photo shared on your timeline is a vehicle for social interaction; it is not a receptacle for keeping those photos.
Images uploaded to Facebook are converted to a lower resolution (read: lower quality) immediately. So if you want to retrieve that image from the platform later, it will be optimized for web viewing—definitely not for printing.
Any social media platform may change its terms of service at any moment, and none of them can guarantee the longevity of your data. It’s your responsibility to back up your original digital images, whether on an external hard drive or in the cloud.
Do you enjoy endless scrolling to find the picture you want? Despite hashtags on Instagram and the ability to make albums on Facebook, the actual search and sort functionality of these platforms is slim to none. The longer you have been posting pictures, the more challenging it becomes to find them on these sites.
And then there’s this:
Does what you post to Facebook accurately reflect your life the way you want to recall it?
There is a handful of companies that will generate an annual memory book straight from your Facebook feed. A nice idea in theory, but I am willing to bet some of the things you post are a bit more throwaway than legacy material. If I were to have a book such as this made, amidst the photo shares from my son’s first day of school and holidays would appear such non sequiturs as a photo of the kale smoothie I ate for breakfast on January 23; a picture of the sign that made me smile at a professional conference (“Toilet out of order; please use the floor below”); political articles galore (brave shares during these politically divisive times!) and myriad lip-synch battles and carpool karaoke videos. If Facebook were to tell my life story, I’d be just a tad embarrassed.
If your Instagram feed is awesome, preserve it.
The best camera is the one that’s within reach. And so it is that so many everyday, often compelling, moments are captured and shared on Instagram. For some, the phone has become the family camera.
If that’s you, consider an annual Instagram book, an offbeat way to memorialize the shots you love. We can create a modern square heirloom book with glossy lay-flat pages that give life to your photographs in fun and engaging ways. Hashtags become bold graphic elements, user comments (especially from friends and family) may add humor or context. The final result is a whimsical, contemporary book that documents your life in a fun yet precious way.
A square-shaped, textured-leather covered book with silver page gilding is an unconventional and oh-so-fun choice for a family Instagram annual.
Hashtags and captions (above and below) add context and a modern graphic feel to an Instagram book. #FamilyAnnual #YearInPictures
A book based on social media posts may seem light-hearted, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be substantive—this heirloom's got weight and whimsy!
Whatever you do, don’t let any of your social media platforms become your primary storage place, whether by accident or default. Your memories matter too much to lose them to some virtual void.
#MemoriesMatter #InstagramBook #Facebook #SocialMedia #FamilyMemories #Legacy
*This post was updated for timeliness on March 25, 2021.
“Billee’s ‘Famous’ Foods”
Gramma Billee kept a jar for bacon drippings on her stove; she used it liberally and kept it full. She knew everyone’s favorite foods and provided them—often.
Gramma Billee kept a jar for bacon drippings on her stove; she used it liberally and kept it full. But one of the most important ingredients she cooked with was intention: She knew everyone’s favorite foods and provided them. Often. Decades later, her granddaughter shares remembrance and recipes so that Billee’s descendants may nourish their own families with her “famous” foods.
As I have written about before, tastes conjure memories in a most primal way, and can transport us right back to our childhood kitchens. As such, they are excellent jumping-off points for writing or talking about your memories and crafting them into a story for generations to come (not to mention, the kids will be thrilled to have those cherished recipes actually written down).
In this latest contribution in our series, A Taste of the Past, we are treated to one family’s “famous” foods, as skillfully and lovingly prepared by Gramma Billee—and now, her descendants.
A Taste of the Past
Gramma Billee, the writer's baby brother, and the writer as a little girl, 1982
Billee’s “Famous” Foods
By Melissa Finlay
I visited my grandmother Billee in person for the last time when she was 90 years old. I spent several days interviewing her, recording her memories and anything else she wanted to leave for posterity. She told me plenty of stories about her life and details about our ancestry, but she most wanted me to record her recipes, to pass her food legacy on to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her recipes were close to her heart, full of memories of friends and family, and preciously held knowledge of who loved which food the most.
Stories of struggle, and hope
While I recorded her recipes, I was the fortunate recipient of my grandmother’s stories, as each dish sparked memories anew.
Billee’s dishes were famous among everyone who knew her. Her recipes came to be referred to as “Billee’s Famous Enchiladas,” “Billee’s Famous Cherry Pie,” “Billee’s Famous Hummingbird Cake,” even “Billee’s Famous Hot Cocoa.” Not that her dishes were necessarily original—she liked to collect recipes from newspapers, magazines, and friends—it’s just that she made them so well, and shared them so generously. She cooked for family get-togethers. She brought overflowing platters to church potlucks and work parties (I think they may have held extra work parties to score more of her foods!). Billee knew everyone’s food favorites, and provided them.
Her life wasn’t always full of ample food, though. During the Great Depression, Billee’s father struggled to find work and her mother suffered from serious health problems. Billee’s maternal grandparents stepped in to help the family get through these lean years.
Billee recalled walking with her younger sister to their grandparents’ corner grocery store each morning on the way to school. Her grandmother gave them each a “store lunch” to take with them. After school, Billee returned to the store to work for a few hours to repay her grandparents’ generosity.
Billee’s own young family moved from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lake Jackson, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, in the mid-1950s. Here she learned how to cook with seafood, not as a premium ingredient but as an affordable protein to feed her growing children. When Billee was widowed at 47, she struggled financially while training to enter the workforce. She did her best to nourish herself and her youngest son during this difficult time.
A granddaughter’s perspective
By the time I came on the scene, Gramma Billee had a steady career and an active social life. She was constantly in the kitchen. As I watched her cook, I asked her plenty of questions. She answered every one, but never invited me to pitch in; she did the gourmet cooking and baking herself. She was the master! Cinnamon rolls filled with pecans and raisins. Shrimp quiche. Stuffed mushrooms. Tender brisket. Squash casserole. Molasses cookies. Pie, pie, and more pie.
When I was a child, her dishes always seemed luxurious to me—indulgent even. She used copious amounts of seafood, avocados, cream, pecans, butter, and shortening, ingredients not commonly used at my home. Billee kept a jar for bacon drippings on her stove; she used it liberally and kept it full. Dessert was a standard course on her menus. Yet, for all her decadent cooking, she always watched her own portions and remained slender throughout her life.
Gramma Billee introduced me to many new southern foods. I knew if Gramma made it, it would be delicious, so I tried every strange new thing she offered me. I loved so many! Billee made the only liver and venison I would ever eat, the texture and flavor superb with bacon and onions. Shrimp Victoria became a favorite with tender, succulent shrimp swimming in a rich sour cream gravy. Gramma knew it was my favorite, and made it for me often. I enjoyed the crunchy, salty bites of her fried okra. I can still recall the smells of apricot fried pies bubbling in the cast iron skillet. Nothing, however, could tempt my sweet tooth more than Billee's sweet-tart cherry pie.
I have begun to record the recipes for many of grandmother Billee’s “famous” offerings, transcribing her hand-written (often butter-stained) notes for other members of the extended family. So that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can choose a favorite dish. So they can make it often and think of her. So her nourishing legacy can live on.
Recipes from Billee’s repertoire
I will start by sharing my favorite dishes that she made “just for me” every time I visited. These dishes still bring me the comfort of being with my gramma every time I eat them.
An array of Billee’s handwritten recipes—well-loved and well-used, all!
Shrimp Victoria
1 pound shrimp, peeled and de-veined
½ pound mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cube of real butter
1 tub of sour cream
Salt, to taste
Red pepper, to taste
Sauté onion and garlic in butter until softened. Add mushrooms and spices and sauté until soft. Add shrimp and sauté until just pink. Take off the heat and stir in half the sour cream. When dished up over a hot bed of rice or egg noodles, top with a dollop of sour cream. Serve with a salad and a nice loaf of French bread.
Orange-Avocado Salad
1 medium head lettuce, torn, about 6 cups
1 small cucumber, thinly sliced
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
One 11-oz. can mandarin oranges
2 tablespoons sliced green onions
In large salad bowl, combine lettuce, cucumber, avocado, oranges, and onion. Just before serving, pour on dressing and toss.
For dressing:
½ teaspoon grated orange peel
¼ cup orange juice
½ cup salad oil
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
Combine all ingredients in screw-top jar. Cover tightly and shake well.
Cherry Pie
1 can unsweetened cherries
2 tablespoons tapioca
¼ teaspoon almond extract
Mix above ingredients and let rest while making pie crust.
For easy pie crust (makes two crusts, top and bottom):
1 cube oleo, melted (Gramma’s name for shortening)
1 cup + 2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sugar
Mix ingredients until they form a soft ball. Roll, and form half in pie plate.
Pour cherry filling into unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle filling with 1 cup sugar, generous dots of butter. Place top crust over filling. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
Melissa Finlay is an avid genealogist, a garden guru, a homeschooler, mama to 7, and wife to the love of her happily-ever-after. She and her husband recently created an app, Little Family Tree, to introduce children to their family history.
“Mom’s Spaghetti and Meatballs”
Red sauce ran in her grandmother's blood, and every family member would one day memorize her beloved recipe. Peek into a family kitchen, and a mother's heart.
Red sauce may have run in her grandmother's blood, but every member of the family would come to know the recipe by heart (even if the size of a "pinch" of this and a "dash" of that differed depending on who was making it)...
Smells—in this case, of garlic and oregano—and tastes conjure memories in a most primal way, and can transport us right back to our childhood kitchens. As such, they are excellent jumping-off points for writing or talking about your memories and crafting them into a story for generations to come (not to mention, the kids will be thrilled to have those cherished recipes actually written down).
In this second contribution in our series, A Taste of the Past, a family passes down the secrets to their own version of spaghetti and meatballs, never writing down a recipe, but always cooking with love and remembrance. Join me in raising a glass (red wine, of course) in honor of Kaitlin Ahern's shared food memory. Cin cin!
A Taste of the Past
The family behind the red sauce: the writer’s mom, Darice, in her mid-twenties, with her parents, Martin and Veronica Smith. Circa 1975
Mom's Spaghetti & Meatballs
By Kaitlin Ahern
I have few memories from childhood more vivid than watching my mother cook dinner. The sight of her standing at the stove in our small kitchen, wooden spoon in one hand and glass of wine in the other, creating a meal for our family of four, is easier to conjure than what I had for breakfast yesterday. And although she passed away when I was barely 17, I’m lucky enough to know many of her recipes by heart.
Mom was the dinner-maker in our household, a task she loved or lamented, usually depending on how stressful the workday had been. She was happiest to cook on weekends, when the hustle of work, sports practice, and homework died down and she could take her time with a meal. That’s when she’d make spaghetti and meatballs—a staple she made so often that she could have made it in her sleep; now I can, too.
I think she loved that meal so much because the two key ingredients tied back to her roots. It all started, of course, with the sauce. Mom’s mom, my grandmother Veronica, was 100 percent Italian; red sauce ran in her blood. When I picture our kitchen from my childhood, I see a pot of sauce simmering on the stove, filling the downstairs with the delicious scents of garlic and Italian spices. The mixture of crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil (fresh from the garden when we could get it), oregano, olive oil, and salt would cook slowly for several hours, covered except when one of us peeked open the lid to scoop up a taste with a piece of crusty bread. The recipe was never written down, to my knowledge, but each member of our family knew it by heart—although the size of the “pinch” or “dash” of this and that was different depending on who was making it.
The other ingredient was ground beef for the meatballs. Our family has always made all-beef meatballs, despite the Italian tradition to mix beef and pork. The preference was really born out of convenience—Mom’s dad was a beef farmer, and he passed that passion down to his oldest son, who still supplies our growing family with grass-fed steak, ground beef, and stew meat. Mom would combine the pound or so of Uncle Marty’s beef with one egg, a splash of milk, parsley, and just enough breadcrumbs to hold it all together, but she always let the flavor of the meat be the star—a small way of showing how proud she was of her big brother’s hard work. After browning the meatballs in olive oil, she’d cover them with the sauce and let them simmer away for an hour or so, or until we were ready to eat. Leftover sauce (if there was any) was tossed in the fridge and saved for Friday night, when Dad would make pizza.
Mom never went as far as making her own spaghetti, so that part of the meal came from a box. But she’d always make a big salad tossed in a homemade Italian dressing with olive oil, vinegar, garlic salt, and dried basil and oregano.
“I didn’t fully realize the gift my mother had given me by teaching me her recipes until I moved out of my childhood home.”
I didn’t fully realize the gift my mother had given me by teaching me her recipes until I moved out of my childhood home. Her spaghetti sauce comforted me when I was far from home studying in London, and I basically lived on salads with her homemade dressing when I was just starting out in New York City after college and could afford little else.
I miss her terribly. But when I’m in the kitchen, tunes cranked up, simmering a pot of red sauce on the stove and making meatballs with Uncle Marty’s grass-fed beef, a glass of wine in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, I know she’s there with me, as present as the smell of garlic in the air and the recipe in my heart.
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Kaitlin Ahern is a writer and editor who grew up riding horses and now rides the New York City subway. She enjoys running, traveling, cooking, and all things animals, because you know what they say about taking the girl out of the country. You can follow her on Instagram.
“Pop’s Pie”
Is a grandfather’s love the missing ingredient to the best key lime pie? A young mother delves into memories of the treats her beloved Pop made just for her.
Maybe it’s a grandfather’s love that is the missing ingredient to the best key lime pie...
Smells & tastes conjure memories in a most primal way, and can transport us right back to our childhood kitchens. As such, they are excellent jumping-off points for writing or talking about your memories and crafting them into a story for generations to come (not to mention, the kids will be thrilled to have those cherished recipes actually written down).
In this first contribution in our new series, A Taste of the Past, a young mom remembers her beloved grandfather, and the sugary treats he often made just for her. Oh, how sweet the memories...
A Taste of the Past
The writer's first birthday, Oct. 29, 1981: Three generations—grandparents Catherine & John, their daughter Joann, and her daughter Christine—celebrate with one of Pop’s pies (rest assured, there was a first birthday cake, too, as Mom is quick to point out!)
Pop’s Pie
By Christine Tarulli Mugnolo
I’ve always been a sweets person. That is to say, I’ll be happy with dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I believe I have my grandfather partly to thank (blame?) for that…and for my own sporadic hobby of making delectable treats.
My grandfather and grandmother eloped to Colorado in 1942. Soon after, as an officer in the army, he was stationed in Anzio, Italy, for the remainder of World War II. In between the fighting, Pop did what he did best—he cooked. He became the chef for his fellow officers and higher-ranked officials. And when he was finally home, he was head chef for his family.
There was nothing that Papa loved more than watching us devour what he made on any given day. And he never, ever forgot dessert.
I always felt Pop made dessert especially for me, his chubby, sweets-loving granddaughter. I would sometimes catch him beaming at me, all messy-faced and sticky-fingered. How his smile and hearty laugh would light up the entire room!
While I loved his cookies and his pretty lattice cherry pie, Pop’s key lime pie was my absolute favorite. It was always amazing: thick, buttery graham-cracker crust, sweet yet tart filling, and just a few twisty limes on top as garnishment.
As I got older, the pies seemed to get even more delicious, prettier, and, ultimately, simply perfect.
Pop passed away on December 16, 2001, when I was a senior in college. I was—I still am—devastated. I always will be. We lost our family’s heartbeat, our core, and I lost my Papa.
I think that’s when I started to bake. And I baked all the time then—for my family,
for my friends and boyfriends. I adored watching them taste all the goodness that
I (lovingly) shoved in their faces.
I don’t remember when my grandmother gave me my grandfather’s key lime pie
recipe. But when she did, it was as if she were handing me the damn Holy Grail. It’s been about 14 years, and I still cannot get it just right. I make the pie once or twice a year; it’s my special time with him. No TV, no one else in the room...just the two of us. How I curse that Pop didn’t write down what he really did to make his pie so great!
Eventually, I made my own tweaks. While my pie is good, it’s not as good as I remember his to be…and not nearly as beautiful. But that’s okay; it doesn’t have to be.
I have his—our—faded and butter-stained recipe, which, to me, is more beautiful than any pie. And I take it out every time I make it.
If I could have a few more hours with him, I’d introduce him to my daughter (oh, he would just eat her up!); I’d dance with him and not give him a hard time about it; and we’d bake together, so I could finally learn his secrets to the best key lime pie I have ever had.
Love and miss you always, Papa.
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Christine Tarulli Mugnolo is a wife to a traveling husband, stay-at-home-mom to a very active toddler and two rescue pups, and in her spare time, a freelance editor. She thinks there’s no better smell than that of an old book from the library.
Pop’s Key Lime Pie Recipe
Crust
1 1/2 packs graham crackers, crushed
2 tablespoons margarine
Filling
8 eggs, separated (yolks only)
2 cans condensed milk
6 ounces lime juice (from about 6-7 limes) or Nellie & Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice
green food coloring (optional)
To make crust:
Combine graham crackers and melted margarine in bowl, then press into pie pan. Chill 30 minutes before pouring in pie filling.
To make filling:
Preheat oven to 350°
Combine egg yolks with condensed milk in medium bowl.
Mix well. Add lime juice a little at a time until smooth and creamy. Add a touch of food coloring until filling is desired color. Pour into pie shell. Slice a lime very thinly and add slices to top of pie before baking. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes.
The writer’s grandfather, John Carl Esposito (April 25, 1922 - December 16, 2001), in uniform in Pueblo, Colorado, where he was stationed before going overseas; 1942
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of Sept. 23, 2026, is overflowing with recent reads on memoir, life story writing, and family history preservation.