NOW ENTERTAINMENT Nov. 24 Month 00- -30, 00,2024 2023
Your Weekly TV Entertainment Brought To You By Olean Times Herald & The Bradford Era
Emmy-winning chef Lidia Bastianich meets some of America’s biggest culinary influencers in “Lidia Celebrates America: Changemakers,” premiering Tuesday, Nov. 26, on PBS. Lidia Bastianich stars in “Lidia Celebrates America”
Cover Story Giving thanks to ‘Changemakers’: Bastianich travels America to talk sustainable eating By Dana Simpson Lidia Bastianich loves food. But in truth, the Istrian-born chef’s interest in food is so strong because of her love of people. With more than 60 years under her belt in the service industry and a still-growing cooking education brand that includes a series of popular cookbooks and TV specials, Bastianich is hitting the road one more time to experience some of the best food in America. This time, however, Bastianich has sustainability on the brain as she interviews chefs and entrepreneurs from across the country to find out what drives them to create and share the magic of good food. A part of the three-time Emmy-winning series “Lidia Celebrates America,” chef Lidia Bastianich pays homage to her chosen home country in the docuseries’ newest installment. “Lidia Celebrates America: Changemakers” premieres Tuesday, Nov. 26, on PBS. Check local listings for times. Having opened her first restaurant — Buonavia in Queens, N.Y. — with her then-husband Felice in 1971,
there is no denying that Bastianich’s knowledge in the kitchen is extensive. But unlike many other celebrity chefs whose public personas come off as aloof, pretentious or downright nasty, Bastianich’s love for people is evident — a fact of which I am reminded with each encounter. “My message is to thank America,” says Bastianich, “because I am grateful. “America is always great,” she later continues, adding, “There are such great people out there ... respecting each other, helping each other. [With ‘Changemakers’,] I want to bring [viewers] that beauty that exists in reality in America.” In the hour-long “Changemakers” special, Bastianich visits towns and cities in Minnesota, California and Virginia to learn more about what drives other food enthusiasts who are at the forefront of beneficial change. She begins in Minneapolis, meeting with James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur Sean Sherman to discuss foods, herbs, flavors and culinary traditions that are important to Indigenous cuisine. Stopping first
at the Indigenous Food Lab located in the Global Midtown Market, Bastianich later visits Sherman at his upscale restaurant, Owamni (a Dakota word for “turbulent water”), to indulge in mushroom tacos, hominy and bison stew, a tepary bean dip and more. Next on Bastianich’s Minneapolis checklist is the Great Minnsect Show at the University of Minnesota, where she meets cricket-focused power couple Claire and Chad Simons, owners and operators of 3 Cricketeers, a company dedicated to producing, packaging, marketing and selling crickets. With insects consumed by more than two billion people globally, Bastianich reflected aloud that perhaps “cultures way before us” — before “the colonial way of eating” — were more in tune with nature and more adept at balancing meals based on local diets. This is something Appalachian-based chef Kari Rushing also spoke to in “Changemakers.” The owner and head chef of Vault & Cellar in Middletown, Va., Rushing takes a few minutes in the special to prepare what she calls “rabbit food” for Bastianich. Dedicated to reframing the
historical opinion of Appalachian cooking, Rushing makes delicious meals from ingredients that are readily available, living off the land and being “resourceful.” In California, Bastianich visits Patricia Miller of Centre Plate LLC in Stockton and the kind-hearted volunteers of Inglewood’s Social Justice Learning Institute. The co-founder of the Black Urban Farmers Association of Stockton, Miller has taken on the task of farming to feed locals in need, many of whom work for organizations that export food away across America. Meanwhile, “SJLI brings produce to their distribution center, giving away up to 15,000 pounds of produce to community food banks, churches, non-profits and individuals” (per PBS). For Bastianich, the message is clear: we must pay close attention and be grateful to the world around us. “There’s so many things that we neglect,” the TV personality said as we prepared to say goodbye. “So, [in ‘Changemakers’,] I go for things that matter to me, the things that I see in America and I want to highlight.”
Bear Nugz 26 Main Street • Salamanca, NY 14779
1-716-801-3803