Chicken Soup for the Web Soul
Grandmothers join the YouTube craze as a cooking class takes off online.
Aug. 8, 2007 — -- Log on to YouTube and see video of the skateboarder who survived a harrowing 45-foot plunge during an X-games competition, or singer Beyonce tripping and falling during a recent concert in Orlando, Fla. Or go online and find 80-year-old "Bubbe" Scher dispensing recipes for her trademark jellie jammies.
These days, Bayla Scher, a grandmother from Worcester, Mass. — along with many more seniors — is making and posting videos. YouTube and similar Web sites are no longer just for the young and hip. The older and hip are joining in the fun, too.
Scher, who prefers to be called Bubbe, appears on a monthly podcast called "Feed Me Bubbe." In each episode, she reveals a recipe for a favorite dish (chicken soup and matzoh balls was the subject of a recent show) as well as a Yiddish word of the day — part of her insistence on serving a dollop of Jewish culture along with the culinary advice.
"Feed Me Bubbe" was the brainstorm of her 23-year-old grandson, Avrom Honig, who lives with his parents on the other side of Worcester. He wanted to do a podcast about something — anything — just for the experience, and came up with the idea of videotaping his grandmother in her kitchen talking about food — her food.
"He said, 'Bubbe, would you help me?'" Scher recalls. "He said, 'Why don't you make jelly jammies we all like, just make believe I'm not here,' OK, and I do that, and a week later, he came back. He says, 'Bubbe, do you want to see it?' 'Oh, is that me?' I was excited — it was really something."
"At the time, it was just the way to do a podcast. But then, once we really started, and once we started doing episodes, we realized, 'There is something here, there is something here that everybody really truly needs,'" said Honig, a recent college graduate.
"They may not realize that they need it right away, but once they watch an episode, 'Wow, I remember going to Grandma's,' or 'Oh, my goodness, that recipe?'"
Grandmother and grandson have taped and posted a dozen shows in the year since "Feed Me Bubbe" began last summer. Cumulatively, the show has had more than 200,000 hits, and has gained quite a loyal following, as revealed in some of the comments on YouTube.
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