video:
Cooking with Grandma
Cooking with Grandma Gigi
By Meredith Arthur, Eric Slatkin, and Blake Smith
With 8-year-old Olivia’s assistance, Gloria Smith (“Gigi” to her granddaughter) prepares a dish she calls Plantation Casserole. Gloria, who is hyperglycemic, has been making it since her kids were little, because she wanted to prepare something healthy. This recipe, if developed today, would not be named Plantation Casserole, nor would it be deemed especially healthy. But neither of those things matters between Gloria and Olivia; what matters is how hard you pack the cheese, whether there’s nasty garlic in there, and how difficult it is to chop pecans.
I adore this segment under videos. And, two "cheerios" for matching an appropriate commercial to a video program!
I'd be nice if I could actually view half the videos that CHOW posts nowadays. Nobody even updates the youtube website anymore with the recent stuff.
"Plantation Casserole"? Seriously? I can't be the only person taken aback by this one . . .
That could NOT have been more charming. Daaaaang, Grandma's kitchen is tricked OUT.
The dish? No thanks. But I have an unnatural aversion to ground meat mixed with, well, anything but other morsels of ground meat. Sausage and gravy's pretty much the only exemption.
But the love, the tone, the videography? Nicely done, Chow, as usual. I feel the genuine affection from this wonderful woman at the core of my dead, black heart.
What a nice video! I wanna cook with Grammy Gigi-did you getta loada those ovens??!?!? GORE-JUSS!!
Lovely, but what could possibly be alarming about the word "plantation"? are you equally taken aback by the words "farm" or "ranch"? It's simply a description of a piece of land, try not to find offense in commonly used nonoffensive words.
I think Granny did a nice job of including her granddaughter in her cooking session. I also think canned tomato sauce doesn't exist in the world--at least not in mine. I also think that the name of the dish has a sort of negative connotation. I understand that slavery hasn't been tolerated in this country since 1865, but I'm sure I'm not the only human alive who finds the name 'plantation casserole' a bit off-putting. I wonder if anyone out there has ever made 'internment camp chicken' or `Auschwitz pie'. Although I do seem to recall a very funny line in Woody Allen's film, `Annie Hall' which recounts a dish made by his ex-wife, called `chicken Himmler'. Sheesh, I gotta tell ya.