Lucy Pollockâs âBaking With Lucyâ livestreamed Facebook episodes attracted 50,000 viewers, another 20,000 watched reruns of the videos and sometimes each segment has as many as 400 comments. Then, every day, bags of mail have been delivered to the home where she lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Mary Ellen and Phil Raneri in Lawson Heights.
When she passed away on Nov. 22 from complications due to COVID-19, hundreds of thousands of people watched her livestreamed funeral.
Thatâs how many people loved Lucy, who was 98.
Lucy, Mary Ellen Raneri said, would be proud that she and Phil kept up the show with Lucyâs favorite recipes. She would have also been pleased that a new gas stove replaced the electric one, and she would have laughed along with viewers when Phil had to file down the granite counter tops to make it fit.
From one generation to the next, daughters have learned to cook at their mothers’ sides.
That time-honored tradition struck a chord with thousands of Facebook users when Mary Ellen Raneri started streaming “Baking With Lucy” in March 2020, featuring favorite recipes demonstrated by her mother, Lucy Pollock.
On the first episode, Pollock shared her recipe for Easter buns.
The cooking lessons, with Raneri’s husband, Phil Raneri, behind the cellphone camera, started as a way for the Latrobe residents to stay connected with friends during the early days of the pandemic shutdown. They quickly became an internet sensation.
Pollock died Nov. 22 at 98 of a covid-related lung infection, but the Raneris continued to bake as a way to deal with the grief and to honor her memory.