My Grandmother's Ravioli

So I took a six-year break . . . and neither of my grandmothers ever made ravioli
(except out of a can, maybe).

Twice today I've heard announcements about tonight's one-hour special on The Cooking Channel called "My Grandmother's Ravioli." Mo Rocca has intereviewed grandparents across the country and taped his interviews as he learned how to cook their favorite recipes. If I were a television watcher, I'd definitely tune in.

Listening to the the interview with Mr. Rocca on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, I thought about all the wonderful things I remember my Grandma Owen cooking. Recently, her tossed salads have been on my mind, specifically how she chopped all the ingredients with a fine dice, so that it really became a chopped salad. I would never have the patience to chop carrots, celery, green pepper and onion as finely as she regularly did, and I had resigned myself to enjoying those salads in memory only for the rest of my life.

Enter the Vidalia Chop Wizard. Santa brought me one for Christmas, and now I'm fully addicted--it's easy to use, easy to clean, and comes with two cutting inserts, one of which yields the fine dice I so admired in Grandma's salads. You guessed it: now I'm chopping everything, and salad has assumed a new prominence on my menus.

Grandma was famous for her cinnamon rolls, as I've mentioned in an earlier post. She cooked a mean pot roast in the "deep well" of her electric stove, and she kept her cookie jar full--it was a McCoy wishing well inscribed with "Wish I had a cookie" and that was among the first things we learned to "read." Mr. Rocca wishes he could go back in time and arrive at his grandmother's house a couple of hours before a family dinner to learn how to cook her recipes. None of us can go back, but we can all rejoice when we discover a food or a recipe that we remember from those dinners! And, if you can, you can tune in tonight to enjoy Mr. Rocca's visits with other people's grandmas. I may go visiting so that I can, too!