Preserving recipes and stories from loved ones who’ve passed, so their legacy lives on forever.
Our Mission
The Little Tin Box is a place where the recipes of those we’ve lost and the stories behind them are kept alive for generations to come. We invite you to share the treasured dishes passed down from your loved ones, along with the photos, memories, and little details that made them who they were.
From a handwritten card tucked in a cookbook, to a sauce recipe taught over the stove, every submission becomes part of a living archive. They will be posted on our website as well as a possibility that it will be featured on our tiktok. We will film these dishes on camera, weaving in your family’s story so others can see their face, hear their legacy, and know the life that gave this recipe meaning.
Our goal is simple but powerful: to make sure no loved one’s recipes or the stories behind them are ever left behind in a little tin box. Here, they live on forever, shared with the world and passed into new hands and kitchens, so their spirit continues to be felt in every bite.
I’ve always loved reading community cookbooks, the kind made by neighbors, churches, or workplaces, most of them decades before I was even born. I flip through the pages and see names beside recipes and wonder… where are these people now? Surely some of them have passed. Do their families still make these dishes? Would their friends ever get to taste this again? Do they know apart of them still lives on in this cookbook?
For me, this isn’t just curiosity. I don’t plan on having children, which means my own family’s legacy, the recipes, the stories, and the little traditions could stop with me. That thought stays with me. I don’t want the lives and love that shaped me to disappear when I’m gone.
This is why The Little Tin Box matters so much to me. It’s not just about food, it’s about keeping people alive in the only way we can once they’ve passed: through the stories we tell and the traditions we carry forward. If I can help preserve even one person’s memory so that generations from now, someone is still cooking their dish and speaking their name, then I’ve done something worth doing.
About Elizabeth
Elizabeth and her great grandmother Stella “Two-Mama” Adair Wells. 1994
Make a donation
This project is a labor of love, but like anything in this life, it comes with overhead costs to keep it running both monthly and yearly. If you’d like to donate, your support helps us preserve these stories and recipes so they can be enjoyed for generations. Donations are never required, but always appreciated. We also plan to create a cookbook in the future, with proceeds helping this project continue to grow and thrive.
