# 18 questions to ask your grandparents about food and the kitchen table

Food is the fastest road into memory. These questions use it to reach people, places and the years in between. Ask each one "how did you meet?" separately first. Then together. The differences are the best part.

1. What did your family eat on an ordinary weeknight, and what did you eat when there was something to celebrate?
2. Was there a dish your mother or grandmother made that nobody has managed to make the same since?
3. What did Christmas, or the holiday that mattered in your house, actually look like? Who cooked, who argued, who fell asleep?
4. What is the one dish you would want someone to make for you right now?
5. What did your family's kitchen table hear over the years?
6. Who taught you to cook, and what was the first thing you made on your own?
7. What was in the pantry, always? And what was a treat?
8. Tell me about a meal that went wrong. A burnt bird, a dropped cake, a guest who should not have come.
9. Was there a recipe written down anywhere, or was it all in someone's head? Whose head?
   A recipe is an object with a story and an owner. Ask where it is now.
10. What did you eat when there was no money?
11. What did your father eat for breakfast every single day?
12. Which dish is only made for one occasion, and what happens if someone makes it at the wrong time?
13. Who sat where at the table, and what happened if someone took the wrong chair?
14. What did you eat at school at midday, and who did you sit with?
   Who they sat with at eleven is the first friendship chapter.
15. What did a week's shopping cost when you were first married, and where did you buy it?
   An exact figure lets the reader feel the decade in their pocket.
16. What arrived in your kitchen in the 1960s that your mother never had: a fridge, a washing machine, a packet of something new?
   A new appliance is a changed daily life, and daily life is the book.
17. What did you cook for guests in the 1970s, and what did you serve it in?
   The dinner party is a period piece, and they will remember the dish.
18. What did you do for a birthday when you were a child? Was there a cake, and who made it?

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com