Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

In Lidia Bastianich’s PBS special “Lidia Celebrates America: A Nation of Neighbors,” one of the people featured is Kiki Rough, who has gained a following on TikTok and other social media platforms for her “Recession Recipes” series of videos. A self-taught cook, she is helping people learn — or more accurately re-learn — how to make a dollar stretch in the kitchen, resurfacing ideas from earlier eras.

“I think a lot of people facing food insecurity right now feel very alone and isolated,” she tells in the special, which airs Tuesday on Chicago’s WTTW, “and what I’m trying to do is make sure that they have the skills to feel normal and feel empowered, even though everything else feels like it’s on fire.”

It’s an especially timely subject with

See Full Page