Whether or not you'll be gathering around the Thanksgiving dinner table with your extended family this year, you can honor and celebrate your family history and heritage by including some old family recipes in your holiday meal plan.

Grandma's special stuffing. Aunt Mary's squash casserole. Uncle Fred's gravy.

What comes to mind when you remember Thanksgiving dinners from your childhood? A particular dessert? A yummy appetizer?

My grandmother always made the softest, flakiest homemade rolls; we would eat them by the handful. My mouth waters just thinking about them. 

A few years ago, I hunted down the recipe and made them for Thanksgiving dinner. They weren't quite as good as hers. I probably didn't use enough butter. But nevertheless, my grandmother would have been delighted to know that I cared enough to try and recreate her Thanksgiving masterpiece. 

Those rolls will continue to be a holiday tradition in our home — and maybe one-day in our children's homes.

Once you've identified the favorite family dishes that you'd like to revive, you may need to dig around a bit to find the recipes. In fact, some of them may have never been written down to begin with.

So many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers carried around entire recipe books in their heads, having learned each dish from grandmothers of their own. But I bet that if you call around to enough aunts, sisters, and cousins — you'll be able to pull together most of the ingredients. (And fill in the blanks through an online search.)

But preserving and passing on this core part of your family history will be well worth the time and effort it might take. Future generations of your family will thank you.