Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

My grandmother was always in the kitchen.  She made excellent macaroni and gravy with meatballs and sausage.  My mother would go food shopping on the weekend and my mother would make a list on the fridge for my grandmother to tell her exactly what she would cook each day of the week.  Some of grandma’s other specialties were roast chicken, roast beef, stuffed peppers.  She made braciole once or twice. I remember one time when Uncle Joe Ciaccio (her brother in law) came to visit and they made mussells for dinner.  She had quite a collection of cook books and her favorite TV shows were cooking shows (that was before Food Network!)  Grandma often made escarole for herself and my mother.  She loved fish and always made a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner with no meat.

When I was a child, my grandmother was always afraid I’d be cold. She would always warm up foods for me before serving them to me, even if they were supposed to be served cold. Most notably, she warmed up Jello in a pot on the stove. Needless to say, it melted. She never did that again!