Passed down: recipes, traditions, the stories they told

A memory is a moment: it has a when and a where. Nonna's sauce isn't 1987 — it's every Sunday for fifty years, and you can still make it tonight. Passed down is for that: something of theirs you can do again.

The seven kinds

• Recipe — food, drink, a remedy. Ingredients one per line; the method one step per paragraph, and it's laid out like a recipe.
• How they did it — the knot, the pierogi, how they started the mower. Steps, numbered.
• Writing — a poem, a grace, a toast, a speech. Their words exactly, as they wrote or said them.
• A story they told — the one about the goat. Not their words: yours, the way they told it.
• Tradition — Christmas Eve, the first-snow walk, Sunday dinner. Say the month, or the month and the day.
• Game — the card game, the one they made up in the backyard. Players, what you need, the rules.
• Their spot — the fishing spot, the Sunday drive, the bench. A town or a named place, never an address.

The line that keeps it to seven: verbatim is Writing, retold is a Story; an occasion makes it a Tradition; a place makes it a Spot. A thing you can only look at — the quilt, the certificate, the handwritten card itself — is a memory, with photos. (You can add a photo of the card to the recipe too.)

Who adds, who sees

Any member adds one from Add to the page → Something passed down, or from the section once it exists. Managers' additions go straight on the page; a contributor's is reviewed first when the page moderates, like a memory. The author or a manager can edit or remove it; each one has its own page, where anyone on the page can leave a note — made this on Sunday, came out just like hers — with a photo of the plate, the knot, the day. A note can be words, photos or both; its photos are reviewed with it and go with it. And I've made it — I've been there, I keep it — puts your name under it: Made by Maria, Tom and you. Names, never a number; take yours back any time.

Pet pages keep Tradition, How they did it, Game and Their spot.

Asking for one

Don't have it? Ask the page for it — from the kind step of the form. Say what it is (Nonna's Sunday sauce) and which one or why (the one with the pork ribs). Everyone on the page hears the ask; whoever has it taps I have it → add it and the form opens ready. Asks are for the people on the page only — a visitor never sees one — and you can take yours back any time.

The booklets

Once a page has something passed down, Save as a booklet sits beside the section (and under Settings → Save as PDF): the recipes laid out to cook from; a year of traditions in the order the year brings them, with every time since; their writing and the stories they told; how they did it, step by step — each with its photos and its story, something to print and give. Add a line for the cover (For Emma, who asked for the sauce) and choose the cover photo. A tradition with a day comes round on the Calendar and in the Today line, like a birthday; a spot sits on the map.

Every time since

The heirloom is the thing you do again; a memory is the time you did it. On a heirloom's page, members get a button for the verb — Made it → add the memory on a recipe, This year's → add the memory on a tradition, Went there on a spot — that opens the memory form already filled in: the title, this year's date for a tradition, the spot's place. Write what happened this time, add the photos, save. The heirloom's page then gathers those memories under Every time since, newest first, and each memory says From · Nonna's sauce with a link back. It's a memory like any other — its own date, photos, review and visibility.

Keeping it on a page of your own

Save to my page on any heirloom you can see makes a copy on one of the pages you look after — yours there, reviewed the way that page reviews, with From Nonna under it when it didn't already say whose it was. A copy, not a link: change either afterwards and the other stays as it was. That is how a recipe outlives one page.