A recipe that’s never written down dies with the cook. Same with most family stories.

Knowledge that lives only in somebody’s hands is one person away from gone. A cook who never measures anything is not withholding the recipe; they know it by feel, and feel does not transfer on its own. Family stories work the same way, held by one or two people who each assume somebody else is keeping track.

Pick one dish or one story and get it recorded this month, in a notebook or a voice memo taken while it happens. Ask the questions that sound dumb: how hot, how long, how do you know when it is done. Those are the answers that go missing.