Clara: Great-Grandmother or Greatest-Grandmother?

A small great-grandmother in a red blouse hunches over a stove in her rural New York home. From her kitchen she cooks up simple, healthy, and tasty meals. But this woman isnt my great-grandmother, her name is Clara and she is the star of the Youtube series Great Depression Cooking.

Clara is a 94 year old, first generation American, great-grandmother who shares with her viewers recipes her and her family made during the Great Depression. Her recipes, which include such classics as Pasta & Peas (above) and something called Cooked Bread (stale bread soaked in hot water) show that even with very little you can make something delicious, something we need to know in these tough economic times.

But I think there is an even more important reason to watch Clara and share her videos with people you know, specifically, the kind of people who think a meal is just a can of soup mixed with noodles. The kind of people who never lift a knife, and spend extra money on prepared garlic from a jar. I had to grow up with that kind of cooking, being served sodium laced gruel on a plate made from texturized soy-protein beef bouillon niblets. To those people, cooking has become a chore, and they have reverted to acting like children who are forced to clean their rooms. Instead of actually picking up their toys, they just stuff them anywhere they can find, they take a shortcut, and its sad. Make them watch Clara cook, buy them her book, make them try what she does. It says a lot about someones cooking when food from the Depression is more appealing than what they are serving.

A Brief Reflection

After a few days of letting my new food blog sit and ferment without any agitation, I have decided to finally empty the contents of my brain onto it. During this time of contemplation, I have chosen to start of my blog with a brief reflection of my history with what has now become a love affair.

I guess my start with food is one which we all have in common. Suckling on the juice from a mammary gland, followed by jars of various applesauce-consistency foods, most of which were not apple. I am told that once I was finished with these rather unappealing delights, my first bite of truly solid food was, in fact, a McDonald's french fry (cue the wailing gourmets and the rants of Tony Bourdain). Now I am sure, if my parents knew that this rush of grease and sodium would set me on the track towards an unattractive overweight pubescent youth, they would have given me a slice of soft pear instead, but I digress.

My childhood association with food was one of repetition and desire to collect all the toys in a Happy Meal. At home a typical week would be the following:

Monday: Spaghetti

Tuesday: Pork Chops

Wednesday: McDonalds

Thursday: Casserole

Fridays: Eat Out

And every week it was the same. Occasionally Casserole was swapped for tacos (meaning glass like shrapnel causing shells full of red grease covered meat), and sometimes Pork Chops for soup (canned, good lord make your own soup? Thats for people with time). These bland and repetitive foods made me wish to make my own food, and when I was home alone I would take to the pantry and create whatever I could. I would jazz up those bland canned soups with more veggies and pepper. Eventually I figured out how to do more.

When my teenage years came around, I was already cooking stuff for myself. Albeit at the time the things werent difficult, but I made them myself, and I was proud. However, at this age, I also had expanded like a balloon full of helium, only not so light. I tried to deny it, but I knew the truth, I was a fat horrid cow with breasts larger than my mothers. So once High School came around I vowed to make sure I knew what I was eating.

The years ticked on, and my family finally got cable, and the Food Network. Like mana from heaven. While children my age were coming home from school and playing video games, doing homework, talking to friends, doing drugs,...masturbating..., I was sitting on my floor watching people make amazing food before my eyes. It made me think "Holy crap what is this gruel Ive been making?" and I began to observe everything they did. Every knife motion, every seasoning, every ingredient I never heard of I immediately looked up on. I wanted to make that there on my screen, and I did.

Now, a young man, I want more. I want to live food. I want to go and taste and make things, try everything from the unusual to the classic, from the insanely complicated and muddled to the heavenly simplistic and clean. I read food blogs and listen to radio shows and I want that life. Food has become an obsession for me, and I love it.