Gerry Lucas grew up in Lincoln Park as one of five siblings. He and his brothers and sisters started cooking at their mother’s instigation when they were youngsters. “Everybody cooks,” he said. But not everybody runs a bed and breakfast in an historic Wyandotte home, where guests sing the praises of the food. Gerry and Vicki Lucas bought the Bishop-Brighton House on Biddle Avenue in 2000, and spent five years remodeling and preparing the Tudor Revival home with arts and crafts details to serve as a gracious bed and breakfast. They offer three bedrooms with private bathrooms for reservation, …

Cooking—much like the business they’ve established—is a daily adventure for Dan and Stacy Cataldo. They own and operate MediaGrump.com, where they design and publish advertising fliers, business cards, signs and other ventures. They also help manage the social media accounts of some area companies. Dan and Stacy are busy, to say the least, selling and doing the sophisticated computer work their entrepreneurship requires. Yet, at the end of the day, they often can be found in the kitchen of their Wyandotte apartment, creating interesting food. Dan is the real cook of the two, Stacy said, but …

When she was growing up in Wyandotte, Theresa Lokuta’s dad used to watch cooking shows on TV. She thought he was nuts. But six or seven years ago, she caught the cooking bug, too, and she hasn’t looked back. “I love to cook,” Theresa said. “It’s therapeutic. I try new recipes and make a lot of different stuff. I like to feed people.” The person she most likes to cook for is her husband, Miguel. The couple was married in June, and he helps out in the kitchen of their Wyandotte home—when she lets him, Theresa said with a laugh. She is a self-taught cook, and believes anyone can learn their way …

Patricia Izzo is well known in Wyandotte and far beyond as a stellar artist. But most people don’t know that she puts her creativity to work in the kitchen, as well. “I love unique food and I love to experiment,” she said. “Being an artist, I know the art of cooking is something of beauty and totally creative.” She approaches food from two different angles. She learned “rustic” cooking from her parents and grandparents on both the Italian and Polish sides of her background. And for many years, she worked with some of the nation’s finest chefs as an employee of Club Corporation of America, …

Lisa Vilella of Wyandotte doesn’t cook very much anymore, now that her two kids are grown and she is busy with her business. But when she does cook—look out! In particular, Vilella doesn’t mess around when she makes chili. She doesn’t make quarts. She makes gallons of the spicy dish. “I make this huge vat of it, and my husband (Jim) takes it to work,” she said. “We send it with cheese, sour cream, green onions and some oyster crackers and it always goes.” She makes cornbread to send with it, too. “How can you have chili without cornbread?” she said with a laugh. Jim works at Ford Motor Co., …

Editor's note: This story originally ran on Wyandotte Patch on Dec. 6. It was chosen as the Huffington Post's "Greatest Person of the Day" feature on Thursday. Jerry Sickon of Wyandotte started cooking as a kid—the oldest of nine—helping his mother. “My mother did a lot of cooking, and I had to help her,” Sickon said. He liked it, and today, seemingly no task in the kitchen is too big for him to tackle. A few weekends ago, for example, he was leading a team of helpers making 550 pounds of sausage in the kitchen of the Polish Legion of American Veterans Post No. 7 in Wyandotte. He started …

Dan McAfee learned to make pies from his mother. One of five children in the family, the Wyandotte man started making his own pies in high school, and continued cooking in his college years. “I had to make them myself if I wanted pie that tasted like my mother’s,” he said.         Now he’s director of the Detroit Archdiocese’s Office of Christian Worship, a married father of two teenagers and an accomplished cook and baker. And he still makes exceptional pies. “I like to cook because I like to eat,” he said, with a grin. His most recent effort, a deep-dish apple pie, fairly exploded with …

Onalee Cable, 81, of Wyandotte has to laugh when she thinks about Mackinac Island as a place full of fudge shops. Long before the island became synonymous with fudge and long before tourists in northern Michigan were known as “fudgies,” she was making fudge on the island where she was born and raised. "In the winter, we didn’t have much to do, so we made our own treats,” Onalee said. She was the middle child of seven siblings who grew up in the Smith family. They were Chippewa, and lived in a part of the island set aside for them, known as Indian Village. “They moved all the Indians into the …

Kathleen Behm of Wyandotte is well-known for her cooking. Small wonder. She and her husband, Mark, always have something going in the kitchen of the old house they’ve remodeled over the nearly 20 years they’ve lived there. Kathleen grew up in Wyandotte—the eighth of nine children in the Podsaid family—and she loves her hometown, where, she said, everything you need is nearby. She and Mark buy produce in volume when they find it fresh and at a good price, and then cook it up and share the goodness with their large extended family. Someone is always stopping by and visitors seldom go home empty…

If Jane Scarlett of Wyandotte has a “signature” dish, it has to be her chocolate cheesecake cupcakes. She pulled a batch out of the oven and the aroma wafted through the house. The deep, dark chocolate cupcakes are filled with gooey, creamy cheesecake filling. And she doesn’t share the recipe. Otherwise, everyone will make them and she won’t be invited places anymore, she said with a smile. But she shares other tips willingly, and this cook makes a lot of different dishes. The kitchen is the heart of the home she shares with her husband, Jim. It’s a friendly room that beckons guests. She …

Wyandotte mom Kelly Wise cooks from the heart. She rarely uses recipes and has devised all sorts of dishes that are budget-savvy, efficient to make and delicious. Her friends love to be invited over for a meal and Kelly loves to entertain. Kelly’s three kids—Seth, 9, Jack, 2, and Ellie, 1—her partner, Chad Kellogg, a big dog and two cats keep her hopping, and the household hums with happy activity. It’s a warm, cheerful, inviting home for the family and their friends. Quiet it’s not, and that suits Kelly just fine. When her daughter turned 1 recently, Kelly had a party and created a do-it-…