What Do Cooking and Dancing Have in Common?

By Terry Date

Tune into Mo Rocca's Cooking Channel show "My Grandmother's Ravioli" and you'll see a funny Peabody lady who can cook, Doris Spacer. She dances too.

This particular episode is called "Crispy Pork, Donuts and a Waltz." And you'll also see Swampscott Fire Chief Kevin Breen, his wife Leslie (Doris' daughter), Leslie's brothers and grandchildren gathered around the dinner table at Doris' home.

For dinner, Doris cooks Portuguese pork loin, Portuguese donuts, known as filos, and Portuguese green beans with linguica.

The journey into notoriety began for Doris when Leslie penned a biography of her mother in 2010, "Growing Up With Doris," along with an accompanying cookbook full of Mom's recipes -- "Cooking With Doris B."

Doris, who turned 89 on Sept. 26, still lives in the Peabody home where she raised her kids in the East End of the city.

Her kitchen is a place of aromatic smells. Of garlic and onions and parsley.

Her home is a place for humor, her quick wit with an underlying message that you shouldn't take yourself too seriously.

One day when Leslie Breen was a child she asked her mother: 

"Am I fat?"

"No," Doris said, "you're short."

The show will also be set at the Danvers Senior Center, where Doris dances three times a week and teaches Mo Rocca a step or two for the show.

Watch it and you'll see an extraordinary woman who raised three kids by herself, a mother and a cook.

You will be laughing at the end of the show. We hear she had Mo Rocca in stitches.

• When: Wednesday, October 23, 2013 at 8 p.m.
• What: The Cooking Channel, Mo Rocca's show "My Grandmother's Ravioli"

The Cooking Channel is Channel 122 on Comcast in Danvers.