4 Generations of Cooking Love
- Little Chewz
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Original post from March 19, 2023
Welcome to our new page, "The Art of Grandma", where we make time for tea and cake. This page is an extension of the Little Chewz family. The Art of Grandma is about capturing the lost art of grandma's baking and cooking and using it in our everyday life. Grandma's recipes contain a wealth of knowledge intricately woven through storytelling. I remember as a child, I would join my grandma in the kitchen and see how lovingly she prepared dishes for the family. We would have tea and cake parties with friends and I would always look forward to grandma's deserts.
As a mother, I struggled to keep grandma's memory alive in my own recipes. She was no longer around to share recipes with me or the tantalizing stories that came alongside. I must have spent 5 years trying to replicate her gingerbread cookie recipe. With our daily lives being so busy, I treasure the moments I can get in the kitchen and show my children these timeless recipes. As our grandparents pass on, our parents become the storytellers. My mom is now 87, and I fear that her recipes and stories will all but disappear one day too.
When I first opened Little Chewz, it was a way for me to take care of the health of my own children. I learned as much as I could about nutrition and vowed to keep my children as healthy as possible by getting them into the kitchen. This evolved into teaching cooking classes and publishing children's books as a way to share my love of food with my children and students.
When Covid hit, our children could not longer see grandparents. I would watch in sadness as seniors were locked into homes and not able to visit their families. I wondered, how will we preserve these stories in the future? This led me to start a food storytelling initiative within my master's program at the university. I figured that there had to be a way to bring seniors and students together in food learning experiences to build literacy and connection. This led to the beginning of an adventure in bringing seniors and students together which started a ripple effect by working the The Tamarack Institute and writing for the Government of Canada Canadian Second Languages.
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