By Marivir R. Montebon
New York City — Here’s a show to glue yourself on every Tuesday at 8 PM on YouTube. This is a double thumbs up to “Cooking with Granny”, a web series featuring grandmothers in New York, from diverse cultures of world, how they cook their favorite dishes and what’s their life story.
At the launch party late February, producer and anchor person Caroline Shin said the show is her way to acknowledge the many cultures that make up America and to honor grandmothers as the pillars of strength in many immigrant homes. Shin said she and her siblings were raised by her grandmother as her parents were out to eke out a living for their family.
Since its inception, Cooking with Granny immediately drew support from Caroline’s friends and the community, raising about $11,000 through crowd funding. Now that it has nine new episodes to enjoy.
Shin (2nd from left) with grannies Louisa (left most), Barbara (middle), Nina, and Lumen during the official launch of ‘Cooking with Granny’ in Astoria late February.
Shin, whose roots are from North Korea and a journalism graduate of Columbia University, opened the new series featuring her own grandmother and her specialty Korean-style pork belly.
Granny Sanok Kim in the premiere show, talked about her life in North Korea and how she managed to escape from Russian invasion and moved to South Korea by crossing the 58th Parallel. She eventually moved to the US when she was 65 and practically raised her grandchildren. The narrative, in Korean language, had English subtitles, and was formatted in a conversational manner with Granny’s bubbly friend and neighbor.
Shin made the script highly interesting by inserting, in between the death defying experiences of the Korean war, how Granny cooked her thin-sliced pork belly.
In the new series, the grannies include Louisa Grier from Trinidad & Tobago who shows how to make Caribbean hot sauce and Barbara Aliprantis, from Greece who makes Greek-inspired family recipe octopus stew. It also features Nina Ishkin, from Leningrad, Russia as she makes Russian-style stuffed peppers. She also tells her harrowing story of evacuation from Leningrad during WWII. Lumen Castaneda, a teacher, from the Philippines, demonstrates how to make the popular purple yam from ube jalaya. In her episode, she shows how to shop with ease in Chinatown.
During the launch, the grannies were asked, among many things, how they understand younger generations and how to have lasting relationships. Granny Barbie said, you just love the grandchildren to pieces, that’s all. As for love, Granny Lumen said, to love someone else, you have to love yourself first.
Well aside from food, you get wisdom from endearing grannies.
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