Just call yourself ‘vintage’ and leave it at that

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.