Traditions are Made One at a Time

Traditions don’t announce themselves when they begin. They start quietly, often out of habit, necessity, and love. Only later do we realize they’ve shaped who we are.

For me, one of the most enduring traditions of my life began when I was just tall enough to see over the kitchen counter. Every holiday season for as long as I can remember, I have made my grandmother Elsie Eden Clarkson’s English Mace Cake. It’s a classic pound cake with a twist—mace (from the aril of a nutmeg seed). It’s warm, fragrant, and just a little unexpected. The recipe itself is simple.

Christmas Eve meant waking up before sunrise with my mother and sister. While others slept, we started baking and it lasted all day. We usually made between 35 and 40 cakes, working methodically and patiently. We hand-sifted the flour. We used a hand blender. We could fit four cakes in the oven at a time, no more. As each cake finished, we let it cool, then wrapped it in holiday paper, tied it with a curly ribbon bow, and attached a handwritten note. By mid-afternoon—around 3 p.m.—my sister and I would head out on foot to deliver the cakes to our neighbors.

Our Washington, D.C.-area neighborhood was home to people from all over the world - families connected to embassies, universities, and international organizations. We had neighbors from Egypt, Chile, Pakistan, Korea, England, and China. Some Christian, some Jewish, some Hindu. Every door we knocked on opened into another culture, another kitchen, another set of traditions. And every time we gave a cake, we received something in return—a holiday sweet that carried meaning in that neighbor’s home. I remember the mandu and the baklava especially. Shout out to the Lee and Ibrahim families.

What I didn’t understand then is that those cakes were never really about the cake. They were about time. About attention. About choosing to do something slowly and generously, knowing it would take all day.

I carried that tradition forward with our own children. And Wyatt and I still maintain it today—making mace cakes for neighbors and consulting clients each holiday season. We have better equipment now than we did in the 1970s. But I still make every cake one at a time. This year, we made 36.

This Tuesday night we spent seven hours in the kitchen, listening to all our favorite music, talking, laughing, working steadily from 5 pm to almost midnight. The house filled with warmth and spice and sound. It was tiring. And it was joyful. There is so much love in the work. It’s exactly how we feel about Llano & Rye.

Real barbecue can’t be rushed. It asks for patience. It rewards care and demands presence. The hours spent tending a fire, trimming a brisket, letting something become what it’s meant to be - those hours matter.

When we say The Taste of Time Well Spent, this is what we mean.

Food is one of the most powerful ways we pass love, culture, and memory from one generation to the next. It’s how we show up for one another. It’s how strangers become neighbors. It’s how ordinary days become something worth remembering.

Traditions are made one at a time. And they’re worth every minute.