Great Depression Cooking With Clara, A Frugal Dish

Feb. 27, 2009 — -- How good of a cook is Clara Cannucciari, a 93-year-old great-grandmother and host of her own online cooking show?

She's so good she claims to have gained weight during the Great Depression, according to her blog.

Cannucciari says it was her mother who taught her how to cook the meals she now re-creates on her cooking show , "Depression Cooking With Clara".

"My father had to have his pasta every day," she said. "And my mother insisted we always have a little meat too."

In those days of hardship, a dollar had to stretch a long way. Cannucciari said that she and her brother liked meat so much that they would pretend to be sick to get a little more.

"It was expensive during the Depression, so we had to ration it," she told told "Good Morning America."

Cannucciari was born in Chicago in 1915 to Sicilian immigrant parents. She attended high school but money was tight, and she had to leave after her sophomore year. In 1935, she got a job at a Hostess factory filling Twinkies.

She later married, worked as a secretary, and had a son. She has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and now lives in upstate New York, enjoying her growing popularity as an Internet chef of a cuisine born of frugality and resourcefulness.