Someone recommended the Mamaw Gail videos to me, saying they reminded them of their own grandma’s cooking. I’ve watched several (let’s take this one as an example) and something seemed odd about them, especially in the context of “cooking shows.” So I talked through it with Rachel last night and I think we’ve figured it out.

It does remind us of our childhoods, specifically church cooking at all day’s meetings. If you look at the church cookbooks we have from those days, they follow much the same pattern as some of Mamaw Gail’s cooking: mixing together various combinations of boxed ingredients.

To be clear, Mamaw Gail does sometimes cook with whole foods. But her channel is very different from the typical cooking channel—which is part of its charm. Most cooking channels follow the whole foods plus kitchen skills imperative. She does not. In fact, her utensils look like the cheap, worn out type that I remember from my childhood. I doubt Mamaw Gail owns a mandoline. A couple of days ago, I watched her cut up a potatoes and onions in her hand (no cutting board) which instantly reminded me of my grandma doing the same thing.

But is this country cooking? Yes, of a sort. It’s not country cooking that would have been known throughout human history, which was whole foods by necessity. It’s similarly simple, without any aspiration to culinary art. But it’s country cooking with industrial foods, which is a specific and unique thing. It’s the simple cooking of the twentieth century rural poor. It’s not traditional, even if it inspires nostalgia among those (like me) who grew up around it.