Food often represents an expression of love. Whether a fancy meal or a favorite childhood comfort food, the sentiment behind the preparation is key. Preparing and serving food is a beautiful way to express our love for other people. The food doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate- it can be as simple as a bowl of cereal. Long after the last bite is eaten, we remember who we shared the food with and how it made us feel. Cereal, in fact, holds special significance for Keerthana from Cary, North Carolina. She remembers how her grandmother would lovingly prepare cereal for her each day, just the way she liked it,…

Recreating favorite family recipes on the holidays is a fantastic way to remember and reconnect with family and heritage. Fall is an incredible season for food. Each year we look forward to tailgating before college football games, making hearty soups and stews as the weather gets colder, drinking warm apple cider, and eating pumpkin spice-flavored everything. Fall is also a time for gathering and giving thanks. Though turkey may be the most iconic part of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, the side dishes are often the true stars of the show. Many families use recipes that have been passed down for generations. Kori from Knoxville, Tennessee, has carried on the tradition…

Many of us have special memories of sitting around the kitchen or dining room table with our families. At the end of a long day, we would sit down to share a meal and the latest news from work or school. For Anne Elizabeth from Waukee, Iowa, some of the most memorable meals of her childhood took place around a different table: “When I was a child, we always sat at the kitchen table for dinner but on occasion we would get the opportunity to eat in the family room while watching television. I remember my mom had the ‘family room dinner’ table cloth that fit perfectly over our coffee table to…

Lisa Lisson is a genealogy researcher, blogger, and mom to Sarah! (Love that girl!) Making brownies in her Easy Back Oven was her very first adventure into cooking. Cooking at the side of her mother and grandmother, Lisa not only learned how to cook, but came to understand how food brings family closer. One of Lisa’s favorite memories involving food is learning how to make molded butter mints alongside her grandmother. There is no rushing the process, so lots of conversations ensued in the making of those mints. We experimented with colors and flavors and different molds. Okay, a few of those mints might have been eaten, too. Fast forward…

Sarah Lisson is a registered dietitian, food blogger, and one of the co-founders of The Food Memory Project alongside her mom, Lisa. In a way, this has been a lifelong project- Sarah has always had an uncanny ability to remember almost any event in her life based on what she ate, from her chef-themed 9th birthday party to the dishes she cooked for a grade in college. Sarah has been a foodie since the very beginning. She loved helping her parents in the kitchen (and playing in her plastic one), and she read cookbooks from cover to cover as if they were novels. In grad school she volunteered as a…

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” -James Beard, chef and author Is there anything more universal than food? Arguably more than anything else, food is an important and ever-present part of all of our lives. We may not agree on big issues like religion, politics, or college sports- but at the end of the day, everyone’s gotta eat. Food is also an incredible storyteller that lets the world know who we are, where we’re from, and what we value. Think about the dishes your family eats on certain holidays, or the snacks you ate after school as a child, or even the most popular fast-food joints in your…