I put an end to cheap souvenirs. Now when I travel with my kids, I make sure we always do this memorable activity.

• I've been on dozens of trips with my kid and have never liked the cheap souvenirs they ask for.
• Now I put that money toward something way more memorable: local cooking classes.
• The unique classes offer wonderful experiences and provide us with recipes to make back home.

I've traveled to dozens of countries with my children and criss-crossed the United States, taking them along for the ride. I like to think that photos and our memories are the only mementos we need to commemorate our trips. However, my kids disagree.

Despite my best efforts, we picked up a lot of junk during our early trips. We came home with stuffed animals that my kids promptly tossed in a pile and never thought about again. We bought an endless number of keychains that fell off my children's backpacks within days and novelty t-shirts emblazoned with UK flags or seashells from the Bahamas that my kids absolutely had to have, but found embarrassing to wear once we returned home.

I was tired of spending money on souvenirs that made my children, ever so briefly, happy in the moment but ultimately created clutter and stress. Eventually, I found a solution. Now, there is one souvenir I look forward to getting on every trip that takes up no space in my suitcase: a recipe for a favorite local dish.

Reining in our souvenir purchases left us with more time and money for experiences

At first, my kids were disappointed when I started saying "no" to their requests for souvenirs. To my children's dismay, many snow globes and miniature replicas of iconic buildings like the Eiffel Tower were left behind on store shelves.

Slowly, my children came to accept that we would no longer buy these trinkets, and we stopped lingering at the gift shop at every attraction we visited. The time and money we saved allowed us to focus more on experiences while traveling.

My family discovered a love of cooking classes

Although I had nixed cheap souvenirs, I still wanted my kids to have something to help them remember their trip, besides photos. I decided to lean into experiences. I wanted them to have something that would bring them back to adventures together in ways plastic trinkets never could. One of the new experiences we tried was cooking classes abroad.

I am, admittedly, not the best in the kitchen. However, my children love to cook and will gladly whip up a batch of cookies or baked pasta with minimal supervision. When we went to Rome, my pizza-obsessed son wanted nothing more than to take a class to learn how to make authentic pies in the very country where his favorite food was invented.

I wasn't sure my kids would have the stamina to make it through the class. However, they did great and we had a lot of fun. We learned more than I expected about Italian cooking and culture, and enjoyed eating our freshly baked homemade pizza after the class was over.

Even better, we left with a great recipe for authentic Neapolitan pizza, which turned out to be our favorite souvenir of all time. Now, my kids ask to take a cooking class wherever we go.

The recipes we collect from cooking classes are our favorite souvenirs

Since our first cooking class in Rome, we have taken classes in Petra, Jordan, and Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan. Each time, we spend a few hours with a local chef learning about life in the area we are visiting and its food traditions.

We always get great tips about local hidden gems and the best restaurants that don't make the guidebooks. Plus, there is always a delicious meal we made with our own hands at the end.

The classes are often in unique locations

In Tokyo, my children and I wandered down alleys until we found the small kitchen marked by a red lantern, where we had our class. We laughed as we stomped on the dough we had kneaded to perfection, flattening it enough to roll into noodles. My son took it as a point of pride that he was selected to assemble the final bowls of ramen.

In Kyoto, we visited a chef's home to learn how to prepare all the ingredients that go into a traditional bento box. My children poked fun at my inability to cut my sushi rolls into evenly spaced pieces, yet again proving their superiority in the kitchen.

In Petra, we visited a local restaurant to learn how to prepare a feast of Jordanian specialties, including salads and traditional lentil and rice dishes.

The cooking classes we take aren't only fun and educational, they are also the source of our favorite and most used souvenirs. At the end of each cooking class, we walk away with recipes for the dishes we cooked, from ramen to falafel. These recipes have become more than instructions for assembling dinner. They are memories we can literally feel and taste, ones that can take us back, instantly, to some of our favorite times, and they are far more valuable than any t-shirt.