Share The Story Behind Your Favorite Family Recipe

By NPR

Published Oct 18, 2022 7:48 AM

A wood table has food served family style including potatoes and salad with glasses of red and white wine. People sitting at the table have medium-skin tones.

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We all have that one dish that excites our palates and makes us pine for those special memories with Mom, Dad, Grandma or maybe a favorite aunt who created these delicious, comforting dishes. Every family has that favorite dish — and there's a story behind each recipe. NPR wants to hear yours!

LAist and NPR

LAist is owned and operated by Southern California Public Radio, which has runs 89.3 KPCC, the leading National Public Radio affiliate station in the L.A. market. Because of our relationship with NPR, we republish some of their content. In this case, NPR would really love to hear from SoCal families!

We're starting a cross-country journey to discover these family kitchen gems and hear about the stories that spark memories and the cooks who created the dishes. We want to follow these recipes as they've been shared throughout your family and explore traditions that are central to today's exciting cooking culture. We hope this collection of recipes will shine a light into kitchens across the country and connect and create communities through our shared love for food, family and kitchen experiences — successful and disastrous!

Whether your favorite family recipe is memorized, digitized or scribbled on a tattered, butter-stained page passed through generations, we want to hear from you. Please tell us your story of why your recipe means so much and who is/was the family member who created it, cooked it better than anyone or made it even better!

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Fill out the form below, and your family story/recipe could be featured in NPR's upcoming project. Thank you!

Submit Your Recipe

Legal Disclaimer

NPR is collecting your family recipes and stories about their significance to you. By submitting your recipe and story (your "content"), you agree that, while you retain ownership of your content, you grant NPR a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicenseable, gratis, royalty-free license to publish your content in whole or in part in any media or format and/or use it for journalistic and/or commercial purposes, and to allow others to do so. You also agree that you have the right to grant NPR this permission and that NPR may edit your content in any way. Finally, you agree that you have read and agree to our general Terms of Use and have read and understand our Privacy Policy.

Tips on photographing food

^{Lighting is key}

Photographing by a window often yields good results
Soft, diffused, natural daylight is best
Make sure your food is well lit

^{Less is more}

Try and have a clean background with no distractions
Keep it simple - but details are important
Have a neat space
Neutral background

^{Technicalities}

Don't use iPhone/Instagram filters (it's OK to make minor adjustments such as brightness or saturation)
Don't zoom with your phone
Don't have a cluttered frame
Make sure the food is the focus
Photos from above usually work well
Don't use flash
Don't photograph too wide

To the left a slice of yellow layered cake with white frosting and raspberries, at right a bowl of noodles with edamame and chopsticks.

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