Memoir Menu

This recipe is a great way to use food as way to tell and share your life story. Taking inspiration from the Jewish Passover Seder, this meal is designed to tell a story. How might the dishes each dish represent chapters of your life in metaphors drawn from the ingredients, textures, and flavors you choose.

This recipe is focused on one person creating a menu of their life for other people to experience but can be adapted as a collectively assembled menu from the entire table on a life story theme (see Substitutions for ideas)

Serves: 2-8 people who want to get to know each other more intimately

Time: 1.5-4 hours

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Ingredients

• a place that feels like home to share a meal together

• creative time to reflect on your own life story and how that could be translated and experience with food

• 3-5 dishes that tell a story about you. These could be organized as appetizer, entree, sides, dessert or as a snack dish of 3-5 things that tell your story. The amount of food is less important than the 3-5 chapters of your story the food will illustrate

How To

Preparation

1. Invite your guests to your storytelling dinner and share why you want to share stories in this way and the hope that this is reciprocal. This works nicely for a romantic date to take turns and get to know each other better or for a friend group that wants to build intimacy.

2. Decide which story you want to tell this table at this time. Your life could make a million menus -- which one do you want to serve now? A few ideas to get you thinking:

   1. Chronological menu: foods that represent your life chronologically from childhood to the present. Your appetizer reflects your earliest chapters and dessert reflects you today

   2. Thematic milestone menu: a dessert menu focused on all the sweetest moments of your life

   3. Travelers menu: a menu based on all the places you've lived that have contributed to who you are today

3. Write or print out the menu. Having a written guide can help the storytelling and give your guests a memento of your menu memoir.

4. Plan and make your dishes. If you're an amazing cook and planning menus is second nature to you--amazing! If not (🙋‍♀️), be kind to yourself and outsource. Buy things from the grocery store, use packaged foods if they tell your story the best. Your story is what unifies this menu and makes it special.

Execution

1. Introduce your menu. Tell people why this is the menu you want to share with them. This doesn't have to be a long speech, but should welcome people into the experience of your memoir. Invite people to get excited about getting to know you more deeply over the course of the meal.

2. Introduce each dish. Share how these ingredients, flavors, and textures best illustrate the chapter of your life you want to share.

3. Let the conversation flow, let people ask questions. Let others be curious and see what off-menu stories come to light during the meal.

4. Plan for reciprocity. Ask when you can indulge in the story of your date or which friend in the group wants to host next.

Substitutions

1. Collaborative potluck menu: Assign a theme to the menu and ask each guest to prepare a part of the menu. For example, the theme could be 'Identity shifts' and one person creates a drink that reflects an identity shift in their life, one creates an appetizer, one more the entree, etc.

2. The Birthday occasion: This recipe is perfect for focusing on one person and storytelling at moments of reflection like a birthday. The menu could be designed to be a lifetime retrospective or a reflection on the best year of life--perhaps the dessert is the sweet wishes for the year to come.