Questions to ask your parents

18 questions to ask your parents 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. Record it. Not notes: a recording. The sound of the voice is the part you will want in twenty years.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question.

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?

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 8 of the things a writer needs about your parents: loves and tastes, objects, places, food, music, habits, routines and work, key relationships, the story that shows them, their place in history, how they look and move, beliefs and values.

When people ask these. the holidays; an anniversary; before a big move.

More questions to ask your parents

• All questions to ask your parents
• Questions to ask your parents about their childhood
• Questions to ask your parents about family history
• Questions to ask your parents about love and marriage
• Questions to ask your parents about their work
• Questions to ask your parents about the war
• Questions to ask your parents about faith and beliefs
• Questions to ask your parents that are funny
• Questions to ask your parents about hard times

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.