The bunch of us who are here decided to have a brainstorming session. It proved really valuable for me. I hope the same is true for the rest. The ideas I asked people to brainstorm around were:
What could you learn about food from your grandparents? &
How would you like to learn this?
There were some great ideas we came up with.
SKILLS: A lot of people would like to learn skills like slow cooking, choosing ingredients and produce, learning how to reuse leftovers & reduce waste or even how to hunt and butcher an animal!
ATTITUDES & ETHICS: Some of the ideas were about attitudes such as valuing, cooking and eating all of the animal, preserving traditional and family recipes. Across cultures there was the passing down of what we called the ‘Food Bible’ - a canonic book of traditional recipes that you receive at a major life event such as moving out of the family home or getting married.
EXPERIENCES: The way we have learnt from our grandparents is through experiences with them such as watching or cooking with them. Trading grandmas would give us a peek into traditional cuisines of other cultures and their attitudes towards food. Experience the era of food rationing that are grandparents lived through would also be fascinating.
GRANDMA ENABLED: There was a whole series of services or products that would be enabled by grandparents - An ‘Ask Grandma’ kiosk at a supermarket (one of my favourites), a recipe kit put together by grandma or a grandma measurement system.
