Grannycore. It's a Thing.
It's a good time to be a Nonna-in-training. Assemble your doilies, table runners, and floral teacups; you've got competition.
Grannycore and Home Decor
When I first started Cleavers & Curls last year, it was meant to be a layered space on which I share some behind-the-scenes stories amidst my food-writing shenanigans, all while paying homage to the lady with the CLEAVER and the CURLS who inspired me to love food and love being in the kitchen: my paternal grandmother, Caroline.
Additionally, the more I interview chefs—hundreds deep at this point—the more an abuela, a nonna, a bubbie, a yia-yia, a nan, a grandma comes up as an early inspiration for why said chefs do what they do. Because it always comes up, and because I am always interviewing chefs, it is always on my mind; hence my decision to make Cleavers & Curls a vessel for such stories, among other things, of course.
[Stay-tuned. Next week, I talk to Chef Efrén Hernández of Casa Susanna about both of his abuelas].
Hug a Grannie Today
Alongside the sweet nods to grans across the globe, as a culture we seem to FINALLY be paying our grandmas more respect than ever before. Whether it is because the pandemic taught us to hold our families closer, and to even turn to gran’s recipes for solace through baking, or because grandmas of today look nothing like the grandmas of yesterday, it is hard to tell.
Whatever the reason, grannycore and all its displays of sweetness, comfort, and apple-pie-smelling-things, is ever present. Check it out on TikTok, for example. There are even countless pages hosted by Millennials and GenZs who are enacting gran-abilities and cultivating gran-scapes. From crochet groups to baking and garden clubs, many are embracing their inner-gran like never before and I couldn’t be happier.
My step-daughter recently got a pup and, although I think my husband and I are years away from officially being grandparents, I somehow jumped on the opportunity to refer to myself as the dog’s nonna and to my husband as his opa. Cute, right? Maybe. I’ve taken it one step further and for some reason have proclaimed a desire to be called ba-nonna when the kids (if?) have children of their own in order to blend the Ukrainian and Italian names for grandma as my own. None of the kids are anywhere near this stage, but….I’ve clearly thought about my own potential grannie status way too much.
Can you blame me? Look at Martha Stewart, who at 83 is gorgeous as ever, collabing with chefs like José Andrés on a fun, new show or partying it up with Snoop. I had the pleasure of interviewing her for all of 17 minutes last fall—when we talked about tomatoes, I was in heaven— and attended a Netflix event “with” her in April. It was wild to not only see her up close—her skin is flawless—but to watch how people swarmed around her, all while she tried to just have a bite to eat. I semi-swarmed with hubs grabbing a video of me simply in her orbit.
*at the Netflix Chef’s Table party in April. I’m nerding out over Martha Stewart behind me.
Can you blame me? Look at Dorie Greenspan who is the goddess of baking, jets back and forth from the U.S. to Paris throughout the year, inspires us in the culinary space with time and kindness only a gran can share, all while looking chic as can be, and producing books in the double digits. She also happens to make grandma-ing look like so much fun, posting the cutest pics of herself baking with her adorable grandbabies.
Can you blame me? Look at my mother-in-law, who at 90 (yes, nine-fucking-ty) is a busy bumble bee with the cutest, decorated home—with every piece in its place, complete with a story about its origin—and she hosts weekly card games and dinner parties and quite likely only sits for approximately 12 minutes in a day. You would never guess she’s nine-fucking-ty.
She bakes like nobody’s business. We recently spent time together on a family vacation in the Outer Banks, and she, of course, prepared a piled-high stack of containers full of her famous German treats—datenut bread, oatmeal cookies, and nutkuchen, to name a few—for 12 hungry people, all of whom knocked each other over to get to the stack of her tasty goodies first. Seriously, don’t mess with me if Oma’s datenut bread is nearby. Just sayin’.
Can you blame me? My own mother, at almost 83, also seems to defy aging, making the grandma landscape look brighter and funner than it might have ever before. She can handcraft at lightning speed, making a necklace and earring set before you’ve set the table for dinner, or knit a scarf and blanket between dinner and bedtime. And, if music is on, she dances like she’s 20 but with no care in the world, and with oh so much style.
Grannycore IRL
It used to be we tried to freeze time, thinking if we could hold onto our youth we’d have more value. Instead of looking back, I am looking ahead and carving out a healthy, happy place for the ba-nonna within. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to speed up the clock—I have so much more to do before I clean spit-up again—but I am looking at that time in the distance with fondness, not fear; with respect, not irrelevance.
Coming Soon on Cleavers & Curls: more with Chefs talking about inspiration from their grandmothers; odes to tasty things; last suppers; off the record food-writing stories.
