Traditiooooooon! Tradition!

I really enjoy holiday traditions.  Like ornament exchanges, or cookie bake-offs or, something I recently discovered from a friend, pirate exchanges.  There are a few Christmas traditions in my family as well, but the greatest is a fantastic dish of pasta con nussa, which has traveled from our beloved Italia over the Atlantic and down the Eastern coast with my Brugnolotti family for at least a hundred years.  This cold lasagna-like pasta is made on Christmas Eve by a noted female chef and served on Christmas day, after being tested by myself, my grandfather, my uncle, and my aunts.  This year, my mother had the honor of creating this famous family dish, thus completing Christmas dinner.
As usual when I am in the kitchen with my mom, I hovered over her, watching carefully as she set up pots of boiling water, and all the ingredients: lasagna noodles, a loaf of white bread, walnuts, Parmesan, and garlic.  A lot of garlic.  (A note on pasta con nussa:  there is enough garlic to slay vampires in here.  Perhaps Buffy should have brought some with her on those many encounters with Druscilla.)
While I stood there, with my glass of Pinot Noir, I asked the obvious question: "How do you make this?"
Instead of giving me her usual answer, a run over of the directions, she looked at me with a slightly stressed upturn of her brow and answered, "I don't know, Rebecca.  There is no recipe."
Well this is just crazy.  I can understand not using a recipe when you've made something so many times you know it like the back of your hand.  (For the record: I do not make food this way because I would be too afraid of damaging someone's taste buds.  My mom, on the other had, makes the best pasta sauce in the world--yes, really--and I have never seen her use a recipe.  Ever.)  But with something you have never made?  That will be served to and judged by the rest of your family?  Please give me some notes!
Alas, there are no notes.  Not even scribblings on an old piece of crumpled brown paper.  Nothing.  Niente.  Only tradition.  And prayers.  Apparently there are a lot of prayers.
I watched with care, as she had done multiple times before, and marveled at the transformation of simple ingredients into a beautiful dish of creamy heaven.
And, Voila!  Pasta con Nussa in all it's delicious, nutty glory.  She did honors to a highly honorable dish.  We were all so proud as we devoured it.
As it is a family tradition, upon their first Brugnolotti Christmas, new members are lovingly offered a small slice of this holiday pasta, in hopes that they will let it melt in their mouth and ask for more.  And they do, every time, year after glorious year.