We start filming this week

This Thursday, I will embark upon a project 10 years in the making.  I have wanted to capture our ancestral foods in a cookbook that not only documents the preparation of a vast variety of dishes, but also honors my grandmother and our family history.  

At first, I was planning to create a standard cookbook accompanied with stories about her and about our family. Since that time, I have come to admire the utility of ebooks. The opportunity to incorporate oral history and video has created opened up new possibilities for this project. I have been inspired by the books like Mira Kamdar's Motibaa's Tattoos and Guadalupe Rivera's Frieda's Feiestas.   

Opening vignette for the book? Maybe?  

Central to my life and my understanding of culture, heritage, history and religion has been food, our Telugu Dravida Brahmin cooking.  As a child, I remember Ammamma's visit to San Jose, CA where the first items she  carefully and lovingly unpacked were mango pickles- both sweet and karam (spicy); Ammamma wanted to bring my mom a small taste from home. Ammamma sat on the floor to unzip her pickle suitcase. I could smell the contents long before I heard the opening of the metal zipper. She removed a large objected covered in 5 layers of lime green plastic bags oozing with the bright orange-ish red oil seeping out of the pickle dabba. Ammamma reused everything, and that Dalda container had seen better days. The Dalda dabba was not designed to cross the Pacific on PanAm Airlines. 

 The next morning, mom would make Upma to act as a neutral vehicle for the mango pickle. Breakfast was served.  I would roll up the sleeves of my red cardigan and tuck a napkin under my neck to protect my plaid jumper. Ammamma's mastry of balancing flavors, salt and oil, coupled with the crisp ripeness of fruits and citrus grown in India simply cannot compare to the pickles made in the US. My mother tried, but it just was just not the same.  I savored each bite quickly as I only had 10 minutes before I was rushed into the front seat of Dad's powder blue Datsun. I attended school near his office in Cupertino, CA. 

More about Ammamma- Who is she? More info. Intersperse this info throughout the book 

 

Needless to say, Ammamma is a phenomenal home chef. She has been cooking and taking care of her family since age 10. Born in 1931 in Vishakapatnam, Andhra Pradesh she started helping out in the kitchen as part of her role as the eldest sister in a family of 5 siblings.  

Ammamma has a love for learning- attending school was one her greatest joys, an opportunity not generally extended to girls in 1930s India. 

Kitchen appliance-- the coverting, seeking, experiementing, purchasing, trafficking 

Ammamma was always frustrated with the fact that she could locate a resource to keep her pickles airtightRecently, Ammamma was given a vacuum sealer, now she can give away the pickles without any concern about leaks or spoilage. -- its her most prized possession-- right after her idli chovi grinder.