By Andrea McGovern

LAKEWOOD-Mary Ann Plewacki likes to feed people. She says she is more comfortable doing that than anything else.
That might be because she started cooking at an early age, or maybe she was a quick learn in the kitchen because she loved it so much. Her family was supportive of her interest. She remembers baking her first cake at age six.
“My mother was an elementary school teacher, and my father’s work kept him away a lot,” she said. “He passed away when I was 13. There were five kids in the family and we all had our preferred chores. Mine was cooking.”
From her childhood home in Kirtland, the young Mary Ann Behm went off to college at Bowling Green State University. There, her interest in domestic life led her to study home economics. She also met her “best friend,” Rich Plewacki. They’ve been married for 37 years.
The couple moved to North Canton, where they lived for 25 years, before coming “back home” to the Cleveland area 12 years ago. They live in a craftsman-style house in Lakewood, close to their parish of St. Luke.
“We searched for a long time for this house,” Plewacki said. “In so many older homes, the original stained woodwork has been painted over.”
It’s a home that’s definitely much loved by its inhabitants.
Plewacki left her job as a fabric buyer for the Singer company when her first child was born. She stayed at home when the two boys were young, but as they got into their mid-teens, she said she began to see they needed a little less coddling. “It was time” to start something outside the home, she said. What she started was a business called Teacher’s Pet.
“I did catering and personal chef services for teachers,” she said. “I chose them because I wanted to take the summers off.”
The Plewackis spend much of their summers at their cottage on Middle Bass Island. During the 1990s, Plewacki worked at the Lonz Winery gift shop on the island and cooked at the winery’s bed and breakfast.
“It was so much fun working there,” she said.
Although she worked hard, the staff and young summer employees made it enjoyable. During that time, Plewacki developed a number of recipes for the bed-and-breakfast, including the pear tart and raspberry muffins she has shared below.
Plewacki is looking forward to the time the ferries will start running again this month, and she and her husband will open the cottage for the season.
“We’ve been going to this place for 30 years,” she said. “My children grew up there. We had a lot of fun and made so many friends.”
She loves the nights on the island, when the sky is bright with stars and the city lights are far over the horizon. She also loves the peacefulness of island life, especially now that her boys are both grown.
Plewacki said she “tags along” on an occasional conference or business trip with her husband, who is a transportation attorney in Cleveland. They also have traveled extensively in California, where both their sons now live. Since neither of them is yet married, she lavishes her grandmothering energy on the three young daughters of a neighbor and the children of church friends. She also does some catering at St. Luke Parish, and helps with the parish funeral brunch ministry.
McGovern is a freelance writer.