What Our Grandmothers Knew About Food and Healing

What Will We Carry Forward?

Recently, I’ve had several conversations with women in their forties and fifties who quietly admitted to me, almost with embarrassment, that they do not cook.

Not occasionally.

At all.

There was no judgment in those conversations, only honesty. And more than anything, what I felt underneath their words was grief. Not simply grief over recipes not learned, but grief over a kind of knowledge transfer many people never received.

Because for generations, cooking was never only about preparing food. It was about learning rhythm, nourishment, resourcefulness, timing, care, and community. It was where stories were told, where observation happened, where measurements lived in memory instead of on paper.

And somewhere along the way, many people lost access to that experience.

Not because they failed. But because the systems around us changed.

Fast food replaced slow preparation. Exhaustion replaced gathering. Convenience replaced participation. Many people grew up without someone standing beside them saying, “This is how you season greens,” or “This is what you make when someone is sick,” or “This is how you preserve peaches for winter.”

What strikes me now is not that people lack information. It is that many people are deeply hungry for reconnection. Hungry to know how to nourish themselves. Hungry to learn what previous generations once passed forward naturally. Hungry to feel capable again.

And perhaps that is part of the reason conversations around food, herbalism, gardening, and preservation feel so important right now.

Because we are becoming the elders.

Whether we are mothers already, someday grandmothers, aunties, caretakers, or simply women moving through community, the question before us is no longer only what our grandmothers knew.

The question is:

What will we carry forward?

Food Was Never Separate From Healing

Previous generations often did not separate food from medicine because survival did not allow for that kind of division.

Food had purpose.

Greens were not simply side dishes. They nourished the blood and sustained the body through physically demanding work. Bone broths restored strength. Garlic, onions, vinegar, herbs, and bitter plants all served practical roles in maintaining wellness long before supplements lined store shelves.

Seasonality shaped the kitchen.

People ate what was growing. They preserved what would not last. They dried herbs, canned fruit, fermented vegetables, and saved seeds because they understood something modern culture often forgets:

Abundance is seasonal, and stewardship requires preparation.

Many of our grandmothers practiced food as medicine without ever using those words.

They understood nourishment through observation, repetition, and lived experience. They knew how the body responded to certain foods because they paid attention. Care was woven into daily life rather than outsourced to systems outside the home.

And while many of them endured tremendous hardship, there was also an intimacy with food and land that offered a different kind of resilience.

They Knew How to Stretch, Preserve, and Sustain

What many people romanticize today as “slow living” or “homesteading” was, for previous generations, often necessity.

There was no option to waste food.

Vegetable scraps became broth. Extra produce was canned or dried. Bread was made from scratch. Herbs were hung near windows or bundled in kitchens to dry for later use. Meals were created from what was available, not from what someone was craving in the moment.

There was wisdom in that.

Not because life was easier, but because people understood relationship — relationship to season, to labor, and to limitation.

My own mother told stories about growing up in the South, where children were sometimes absent from school during harvest season because the family needed every available hand to work. Food was not disconnected from labor. Survival was collective.

And even within those realities, women still found ways to create nourishment and care.

That is something I think about often.

Because today, convenience has made many people consumers of food rather than participants in it.

We know how to order meals quickly, but many no longer know how to preserve tomatoes, prepare dried beans, identify medicinal plants, or cook from what is already available in the kitchen.

Something deeper than recipes was lost in that transition.

A relationship was lost.

The Body Was Understood Differently

Our grandmothers may not have used terms like “nervous system regulation” or “adrenal fatigue,” but many understood instinctively when someone needed rest, warmth, quiet, nourishment, or community.

Care looked different then.

It looked like tea brought to the bedside. It looked like someone insisting you sit down and eat. It looked like warm soups, prayer, touch, fresh air, and the understanding that exhaustion was not something to simply push through endlessly without consequence.

Plants were part of this system of care.

Mint for the stomach. Chamomile for rest. Garlic and onion for sickness. Vinegars for preservation and digestion. Broths and mineral-rich foods for rebuilding strength.

Many women carried this knowledge without formal instruction. They learned through proximity — by watching, helping, listening, and participating.

That kind of learning shaped not only practical skills, but nervous systems. It created rhythms around care, food, and recovery that grounded people in something larger than productivity.

Today, many people are deeply overstimulated, chronically exhausted, and disconnected from rhythm. We are flooded with information while simultaneously feeling unsure how to care for ourselves consistently.

And I think part of that is because care has become increasingly externalized.

We have access to more products than ever before, yet many people feel profoundly unsupported.

Somewhere Along the Way, We Became Disconnected

Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking elders and started asking algorithms.

Google replaced the wisdom of the elders.

Now, information is endless, but wisdom feels increasingly rare.

We can search thousands of remedies in seconds and still not know how to nourish ourselves well. We can watch tutorials on gardening, herbalism, nervous system regulation, and cooking while remaining disconnected from the rhythms that once taught people how to live in relationship with land, food, and community.

Previous generations learned differently.

They learned through observation. Through repetition. Through responsibility. They watched what was planted in spring and what was preserved before winter. They knew what tea was made after difficult births, long days, or periods of grief because they saw it practiced around them consistently.

Knowledge was not consumed. It was lived.

Today, many people know how to search, but fewer know how to remember.

And perhaps that is why so many people feel overwhelmed despite having unlimited access to information.

Because information is not the same thing as wisdom.

AI: Ancestral Intelligence

Long before artificial intelligence, there was ancestral intelligence.

Knowledge carried through generations. Knowledge rooted in observation, stewardship, memory, and survival.

Ancestral intelligence taught people how to:
• grow food
• preserve harvests
• care for the sick
• calm the body
• support women through birth and recovery
• nourish families through difficult seasons
• live according to rhythm instead of urgency

It was not downloaded. It was practiced repeatedly until it became part of daily life.

And perhaps part of our work now is deciding whether that intelligence continues through us or disappears with us.

Because inheritance is not only financial. It is cultural. Emotional. Nutritional. Agricultural. Spiritual. What we pass forward shapes how future generations will understand care itself.

We Are the New Grandmothers

This is the part I keep returning to. We are becoming the elders.

Even those of us who are not yet grandmothers are actively shaping what future generations will inherit. Will our children and grandchildren know how to grow food?

Will they know how to cook from scratch? How to preserve a harvest? How to identify plants? How to regulate themselves without constant distraction? How to care for one another outside of systems built entirely around consumption?

Or will they inherit only convenience?

Will they inherit overstimulation, dependence, and disconnection from the very systems that once sustained communities for generations? Our grandchildren may never remember every word we said, but they will remember how care was practiced around them.

They will remember whether food came from gardens or drive-thrus. They will remember whether rest existed in the home. They will remember whether anyone slowed down long enough to teach them how to tend something living.

And maybe that is the deeper question underneath all of this:

What kind of ancestors are we becoming?

Returning Through Practice

The good news is that returning does not require perfection.

It begins with small practices.

A pot of herbs growing outside the kitchen door. A meal cooked from ingredients that required preparation. Learning one remedy instead of ten. Calling an elder and asking questions while they are still here to answer them.

It can look like teaching a child how to peel garlic. Learning how to make broth. Drinking tea without multitasking. Growing greens in containers. Sitting outside long enough to notice what season the earth is actually in.

These things may seem small, but small practices shape culture over time.

That is how traditions survive. Not through performance, but through repetition.

This summer, I am creating opportunities for people to reconnect with practical kitchen and land-based skills through hands-on classes, workshops, and seasonal gatherings at Yisrael Farms.

From cooking from scratch and food preservation to herbal learning and seasonal living, these experiences are designed to help rebuild confidence, connection, and community around the old ways that once sustained us so naturally.

And honestly, I especially encourage women to come — and to bring their daughters.

Not because women alone are responsible for care work, but because so much knowledge once passed through generations of women gathered together in kitchens, gardens, and around tables. 

There is something powerful about learning side by side again.

About reclaiming confidence in the kitchen. About knowing how to preserve a harvest. About understanding how food connects to wellness, stewardship, and community.

These are not just old skills. They are future skills.

And perhaps part of becoming the new grandmothers is deciding what knowledge deserves to continue through us.

🌿 To explore upcoming workshops and gatherings, visit our Eventbrite page or click the “Classes & Gatherings” link in the main menu on our website.

Closing Reflection

Perhaps the old ways were never truly lost.

Perhaps they simply became quiet beneath the noise of modern life.

The wisdom of our grandmothers still exists in fragments — in recipes remembered from memory, in gardens planted out of instinct, in herbs brewed without measurement, in the understanding that food and care were never meant to be separate.

Now the responsibility shifts to us.

Not to recreate the past perfectly, but to decide what wisdom deserves to move forward through our hands, our homes, and our communities.

Because someday, someone will remember us the way we remember them.

And what they inherit will depend on what we choose to practice now.