Wesy Rosseau lived a life of adventures. From travelling abroad, to moving out of state in her senior years, to competing across the country in pool tournaments, she has always sought to live a full, ever changing life.
Walking into the pool room during my first day at Vintage, I was decidely pretty shy and unsure of who to talk to. Gravitating towards pool was essentially a comfort pick for me. I’ve played the game casually for the past couple years, and watching people play comforted my nerves somewhat.
Wesy reached out to me first, most likely at curiousity to who I was. I stammered out that I was working with the cookbook project, and there to interview people. And so we started talking, while she kept playing pool. It wasn’t super broad, but jumped between a few key moments in her life.
We had to start with pool. It’s been a major part of her life since she’s come to Vintage, playing nearly every day she’s at the center, and going out to compete with competitive teams during the evening. They compete both in local competitions, as well as national tournaments, and to her it’s been a way to keep travelling, keep adventuring.
Working for the Cookbook it’s my job to ask about food, which has been a big part of her life as well. As a child her father had always tried to take her family out to eat on friday nights, instilling in her a love of food, and eventually cooking. She didn’t give me a name, but she told me about how in younger years she had owned a gourmet restaurant. It eventually became limiting to her though, she couldn’t travel as much, she felt like she was chained down. She stepped down and moved here to Pittsburgh all the way from Michigan to spend more time with her daughter, and start adventuring again.
My favorite story of hers was from her college years. She and her roommate decided to take a year off and live in Europe. They travelled across the continent, setting up for scattered weeks in various countries, one of which was Greece. See there was an island that had these caves that were, at the time, a somewhat popular place for tourists to stay. The nearby village was welcoming so they were able to get whatever they couldn’t provide for themselves, and anytime the police arrived to try and drive them out, they could hide in a nearby, abandoned World War 2 airbase. They often fished up fish, squid, and octopi, but would also frequent the village for food. She talked at length about this one woman at the village who would feed them as if they were family.
She would make amazing omelets, and sandwiches that were so large that they had to take them apart to eat. Asking her about how big they were, she showed me with her hands, and they were a bit bigger than a person’s head, nearly a half foot tall! When it came to finding a recipe to post, I knew here was the place I wanted to go. As best as she could remember the omelets had sautéed onions and potatoes baked in, with cream cheese spread over them.