HERE’S something
to bellow into the hearing aids of your most mature companions over the Easter
ham: right now, it’s hip to be
old.
This isn’t just
because people over 55 continue to do extraordinary things --– like the 80-year-old
Vancouverite who is gearing up for her third Sun Run -- it’s because the rest
of the Western world has decided to take notice. Lately the media are
suggesting that these people may well have something to contribute beyond
quaint stories about tea dances and horse-drawn carts.
We find, for
example, that old-time cuisine is newly and mysteriously hot. Google
“Grandmothers’ recipes” and you’ll find 5,900,000 entries, including plenty of
cookbooks.
Since grandmas
come in all shapes, sizes, colours and ethnicities, there’s a book called
Nicaraguan Cooking: My Grandmother’s Recipes alongside another called The
Collected Pennsylvania Dutch Influenced Works of Elda Elizabeth Eddleman,
“submitted by her grandson Mark Ellsworth Hickman, PhD.” And then there’s the
oddly titled The Grandmother’s Recipes, which features the dishes of Italian
nonnas who’ve set a standard their descendants will fail to meet for decades to
come.
In the past
week, both the Globe and Mail and the Sun ran stories on the wonders of such
“cherished family recipes.” The Globe’s article began with the tale of a “grandmama’s boy” so infatuated with his
“Bubbe’s” cooking that he regularly videotapes her whipping up her specialties
for an online series he calls Feed Me Bubbe. (His grandfather plays production
assistant.)
Thousands of
people have reportedly logged on to see how Avrom Honig’s grandmother, who’s
never properly named, makes her mocha nut squares for Passover. The Globe
claims the website’s followers are so passionate that when “Bubbe” mentioned
on-screen that she was thinking of having her kitchen renovated, fans wrote in
to object. After all, drastic change in a grandparent’s environs is always
alarming – never mind that she’s not your grandparent.
Nathalie Cooke,
author of What’s to Eat? Entrees in Canadian Food History, told the newspaper
that the allure of recipes like Bubbe’s is that they’re tried and true. Perhaps
that’s the case for Christopher Cannucciari, another doting grandson, who’s the
power behind Great Depression Cooking with Clara. This website turns the
spotlight on 94-year-old Clara Cannucciari as she shows the world how to
prepare the cheap eats her own mother used to feed her family when times were
tough. Clara’s mother used these recipes then because they were practical, but
she continued to feed them to her family when their fortunes improved because they’d
become favourites. They include dishes like Poorman’s Meal, which blends
potatoes, onions, pasta sauce and hot dogs.
The series is
popular enough that it has spawned a book, called Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom,
Memories and Recipes from the Great Depression. Cannucciari’s grandson blithely
calls her “America’s favourite grandmother” on YouTube. Let’s hope she and
Honig’s Bubbe never cross paths – gnarled fists are sure to fly.
Like these
adoring grandsons, an L.A.-based food blogger called Cathy Danh fondly recalled
her Vietnamese-American grandmother’s cooking. Longing to master a hearty
noodle stew called Bo Kho, she visited the older woman to take notes. Danh
posted the results, along with other recipes she ferrets out elsewhere, at
www.gastronomyblog.com.
Meanwhile, the
Sun’s Randy Shore recently wrote a paean to the loose-leaf notebook his
grandmother left behind, crammed with instructions. This prompted the Sun to
invite readers to submit their favourite family recipes, especially those
passed along through generations.
It’s nice to see
the image of more seasoned human beings shift away from bland and
uni-dimensional, although of course that’s really been happening over decades,
not weeks. Far be it from me to suggest that TV’s Golden Girls, for example,
was in any way a masterpiece, but at least the show represented mature
characters as people who were spirited, complicated and sexual, not sweet,
conservative and chaste.
It’s a positive
sign that Western society largely seems to have relinquished the archetype of
the elderly person as nothing more than a gentle purveyor of folksy wisdom.
What a bore that is. These days, we much prefer Henny Youngman’s characterization:
“My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out
of the bottle.”
That kind of
take-no-prisoners personality must inspire the photographers who are currently
turning their lenses onto stylish oldsters strolling city streets. Vancouver’s
own www.granpaparazzi.com spotlights
people who are eye-catching for the right reasons. So does New York’s Ari Seth
Cohen, who splashes his finds – admittedly much more “out there” than those at
granpaparazzi -- across the Internet at advancedstyle.blogspot.com.
The shift of
positive notice from young to old, however brief it may turn out to be, isn’t
restricted to North America. According to trendhunter.com, Japan’s largest
department store chain, Takashimaya, is actively wooing older customers, male
and female, by placing its luxury items on its lower floors and providing
seating areas for weary shoppers.
The
ever-on-top-of-it Japanese are also producing a cell-phone for the elderly – a
group that’s defined by www.ubergizmo.com
as “40 to 50” – called Urbano Barone. Equipped with GPS support along with a
lot of other acronyms I don’t understand, it also features large numbers and
keys suited to the creaky fingers of, say, Madonna.
With these kinds
of advances, even the most technophobic geezers will likely break down and buy
cell-phones. One thing’s certain, however – the coolest of us will wait for the
leopard print version.