Older granny can be a positive role model for young girls. She can teach them about her own experiences and help them make the right choices.
She also shows them the value of having a healthy lifestyle. She can help them maintain their health and prevent certain diseases. She can also provide them with the care they need as they grow older.
2. She’s a good cook
Long before chefs touted $300 farm-to-table tasting menus and Sam Sifton extolled recipe-free cooking in the New York Times, family matriarchs slaughtered pigs for soup and picked berries for jam. They mastered techniques by touch, smell, and taste–intuitive knowledge built through generations of inherited trial and error.
These days, grannies are a vital source of traditional cuisines and kitchen wisdom. Many are now making their mark on the culinary scene. Take Shin Yun, for example, who filmed her 89-year-old granny and 96-year-old best friend in their assisted living home to produce the Cooking with Granny YouTube series, where she films grandmas from all over New York City bringing old recipes back to life.
Other grannies have taken to the streets with their food trucks, catering services and restaurants. Lou Pape, for instance, employs chefs over the age of 58 to shop, prepare and serve customers. Their grandmotherly touch makes patrons feel cared for and at home.
3. She’s a good dancer
93-year-old Marie Frances O’Brien, better known as ‘Fran the Hip Gram’ on TikTok, has millions of fans online thanks to her dance videos with her grandchildren. She loves to square dance, which she has been doing since she was 15. But some of her neighbours aren’t happy about the grannies blaring their music at high volume. Disputes have even escalated to violence, with one woman throwing stinky tofu, paint and engine oil out her window at the dancing grannies.
4. She’s a good cook
Long before chefs touted $300-per-person tasting menus and Sam Sifton extolled the joys of recipe-free cooking in the New York Times, family matriarchs made meals out of necessity, frugality, and love. Using simple techniques that were passed down over generations and honed until they became muscle memory, grandmothers learned to make a meal out of any ingredients that came their way.
Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and a teacher of Pollan’s, describes grannies as the “most experienced cooks in the world.” Indeed, from Italian nonnas in Brooklyn to Vietnamese grandmothers in East Oakland, these women know how to make nourishing food with limited resources and space.
Shin’s Youtube series, Cooking with Granny, follows elderly grandmas as they teach each other how to cook their family recipes. It is a touching and delicious show that has captured audiences worldwide. Visit the site to view past episodes and subscribe to keep up with the latest episodes.