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.
No comments:
Post a Comment