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A gift for grandparents who already have everything they need

The hard part about buying for grandparents is that they've spent forty years getting rid of things, and you're about to hand them another one. Here's a present with no object in it: you gather their recipes, put them on a website with their name on it, and give them the address.

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What it costs

Nothing today. RecipeMemoir is free while we're in beta.

What they get

A live website at recipememoir.com/u/theirname, with a page for every recipe and a search box.

Delivery

Nothing ships, so there's no cutoff date and nothing can get lost between here and Tuesday.

When to start

Setting the site up takes an evening. The collecting is what takes weeks, so begin there.

Two versions of this gift

Give them their recipes back, or give them somewhere to put them

You do the collecting

Gather what already exists, the cards in the tin, the ones your mother copied out in 1994, the two you can cook from memory, and put them up before you say a word about it. Then hand over an address that already has their food on it.

This is the version to pick if they aren't especially comfortable with a computer. All they have to do is open a link.

They do the adding

Set up the site, put the first five recipes in so it doesn't feel like homework, and show them how to add one. Some grandparents take to this immediately and end up with two hundred recipes and strong opinions about the layout.

You'll know within one visit which version you're dealing with.

A tin recipe box with its lid open beside a stack of old handwritten recipe cards tied with kitchen twine
Most of these have never been copied. If the box is ever lost, that's the whole collection gone.

The collecting

How to ask, so you end up with a real recipe

"Can you send me your recipes" gets you nothing, because they don't think of them as recipes. They think of it as dinner. These questions work better, and they're worth asking with a pen in your hand:

  • What did your mother make on Sundays?
  • What do you make when somebody's sick?
  • What do the grandchildren ask for?
  • What was on the table at Christmas when you were small, that nobody makes anymore?
  • What's the one thing you'd be annoyed to see done wrong?

While they answer, write down the amounts as they say them, and then ask the question people forget: what should it look like at this point? "Until it pulls away from the side" and "when it stops smelling like flour" are the instructions that never make it onto an index card, and they're the reason your version comes out wrong.

Keep their exact words. When you put the recipe in, a workable measurement goes in the ingredients and "butter, enough" goes in the notes, so the next cook gets the number and everyone else gets her voice.

Handing it over

How to give a present that's a link

A URL in a text message is a thin gift on Christmas morning, so give it something to be. Three things that work:

  • Write the address on a card by hand and put it in an envelope. Add one line about which recipe you put in first and why.
  • Open it on a tablet at the table and let them scroll. This is the one that gets a reaction, because they recognize the handwriting in the photo before they read a word.
  • Print the recipe they'll cook this week and tuck it in the card. Each recipe page prints clean on its own, without the website wrapped around it.

One more thing worth doing: put their photograph of the actual dish on the page, phone snapshot and all, rather than a stock picture of somebody else's pot roast. There's an AI upscaler built in if the only photo you have is small and blurry.

Practical answers

Before you start

Will it arrive in time?

There's nothing to arrive. No printing, no shipping, no carrier cutoff, which means you can set this up the night before and it will work. What you can't rush is the collecting, so if you want their words in it, start the phone calls a few weekends out.

What does it cost?

Nothing right now. RecipeMemoir is in early beta and all of it is free: the imports, all 24 styles, the photo tools. We've published the prices we're considering for later, around four dollars a month for one site, and anyone testing with us during the beta stays free for a year.

Do I get a printed book?

No. This makes a website. A print-ready cookbook export is on our roadmap and isn't built, so if a bound book on the shelf is what you're picturing, use a photo-book printer instead and come back for the website later.

What if they can't really use a computer?

Then treat it as a gift for the whole family rather than a gadget for them. The grandchildren use it, the address gets passed around, and you print the pages Grandma wants on the counter. Nobody has to make an account to read it.

They died, and I have the box of cards. Is this still for me?

Yes, and this is the most common reason people start. You'll be typing rather than asking, which is slower and harder in a different way. Photograph every card as you go, even the ones you can barely read, because the handwriting is half of what you're keeping.

Put one recipe in and see

Start with the dish they're known for. Ten minutes gets you a real page with a real address, and then you'll know whether this is the present or not.

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