Mad Hungry Matriarch

Everyone called her Rose, even the family, because she had all the beauty that name promises. She married Lucinda’s dad, an Italian American, three times (we’ll let that story rest), and raised Lucinda and three sons, Jim, David, and Peter. With no Italian roots of her own, she out-cooked the Italian cooks in her husband’s family by making everything better, smarter, and more delicious. Why stuff 25 artichokes one by one when you can toss artichoke hearts with the stuffing and bake trays of them? If everyone loves the meatballs, why not make them into little sandwiches?

When 1950s America was pushing processed food on housewives, Rose cooked simple, fresh food every day for her family of six, and her salad dressing alone made salad eaters of all of them. Every night the kids set out the next morning’s breakfast as their last job before bed. Give her a reason to laugh and she’d crack up harder than anyone, and she found the good in every hard situation.

A true artist, she studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit in the 1940s with a wild crowd that slipped out to hear Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Rose taught us all to stay in the moment and find the everyday beauty in life. And no one, NO ONE, made a tuna sandwich like her.