Lasagna Means I Love You: List 1

by Kate O'Shaughnessy
Trying to recreate a sense of family while in foster care, eleven-year-old New Yorker Maureen (Mo) Gallagher writes letters to her dead grandmother and builds a website to share recipes with stories and photographs.

This list covers Thursday, June 8–Saturday, August 5.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3
40 words 24 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. frail
    physically weak
    Then I thought again about Rose. With her cats and her six-floor brownstone and all her fancy furniture. Her rare-beetle collection and her booming laugh that seemed too big to be coming from her frail body.
  2. overwhelm
    charge someone with too many tasks
    Wish me luck with all of this. And maybe wish that Uncle Billy starts feeling overwhelmed enough to call this whole thing off. Half the time, I hear him muttering about forms and certificates and files he’s trying to find in your room.
  3. fed up
    thoroughly disgusted with or annoyed at something
    Maybe he’ll get so annoyed and fed up that he’ll throw up his hands and say, “You know what, forget it, I’ll stay.”
  4. hospice
    a program of medical care for the terminally ill
    “Gallagher girls don’t need therapy,” I told them, repeating what you’d said to one of your hospice nurses.
  5. stoop
    small porch or set of steps at the front entrance of a house
    Along with recipes, there were tons of pictures of a family glued to the pages. Gathered around picnic tables at Rockaway Beach, presenting a big Thanksgiving turkey in a cramped kitchen, eating off paper plates on the stoop of an apartment building.
  6. inspire
    supply the idea for
    Whenever one of her grandchildren was sick, Grammy would make a big pot of her egg-lemon soup. She’d spent time in Greece as a girl, and told us the recipe was inspired by a Greek soup called avgolemono.
  7. tender
    easy to cut or chew
    Cook rice for 20 minutes in simmering broth, covered, until tender, then add juice and zest.
  8. zest
    the outer part of the peel of a citrus fruit, used as flavoring
    Cook rice for 20 minutes in simmering broth, covered, until tender, then add juice and zest.
  9. whisk
    whip with or as if with a coil of wires
    In medium bowl, beat eggs well. Slowly whisk a few spoonfuls of hot broth into the egg mixture.
  10. curdle
    turn from a liquid to a solid mass
    Soup-maker beware: the eggs in this recipe will curdle if you aren’t very careful!
  11. curry
    a South Asian dish flavored with a spice mixture
    Most of them have little stories about how and why the recipes were favorites of her family’s. One of them—a vegetarian curry stew—didn’t turn out so well. It got all lumpy and the sauce separated.
  12. knead
    use the hands to mix and work something into a uniform mass
    I don’t think it’s going to turn out right, though, because the dough was still hard and lumpy when I put it in the oven. It’s because I don’t have computer rights for the next week. Otherwise, I would have been able to do more research online about kneading and baking bread.
  13. shrivel
    wither, as with a loss of moisture
    When they took my bread out of the oven, it looked like a shriveled black brick.
  14. ideal
    conforming to an ultimate standard of perfection
    “I’m not sure things are working out so well. I think we can both agree that this isn’t an ideal placement for you. For either of us.”
  15. prod
    urge on; cause to act
    “Mo,” Moira prodded. “Say hello. Introduce yourself.”
  16. sappy
    very sentimental or emotional
    “They’re all her family recipes. They have stories and pictures and stuff.”
    I didn’t mean to sound sappy or sad about it, but I did.
  17. brandish
    exhibit aggressively
    She brandished a small pad of paper in the air. “But I got my stepdad’s mac and cheese recipe. I finally got it. Only took me twenty years to squeeze it out of him. Ha!”
  18. supplement
    a quantity added
    Peanut butter sandwiches and mac and cheese were the only two things my brother would eat between the ages of four and ten. When I say only, I mean only. The doctor had to put him on nutritional supplements.
  19. itinerary
    a proposed route of travel
    “We can go to the store together for the ingredients soon, if you want,” June said. “I can add it to our itinerary of get-to-know-each-other activities.”
  20. prance
    move or step in a lively, spirited, or showy way
    I remember her prancing around the stage in her red dress, her eyes bright.
  21. self-conscious
    excessively aware of your appearance or behavior
    It made me feel self-conscious, like maybe she thought I shouldn’t be eating as much, either, since I’m way…I don’t know. Rounder than she is?
  22. cannoli
    tube-shaped fried Italian pastry shells with a sweet filling
    “She’s got magic in her fingers when it comes to baking. Chamucos, cannoli, hot cross buns, biscotti, conchas, you name it.”
  23. ambrosia
    the food and drink of the gods
    “No. Not good. Incredible. Ambrosia.” He forked himself a bigger mouthful. “You really made this yourself?”
  24. blanch
    cook (vegetables) briefly
    I’ve been reading food websites and watching videos on TikTok and YouTube for the past month or so, learning what different cooking words mean, like “separate,” “blanch,” and “deglaze.”
  25. fare
    the food and drink regularly served or consumed
    “This isn’t her regular bakery fare. I told her you liked family recipes.”
  26. consistency
    the degree of density, firmness, or viscosity of a substance
    Add butter and mix with your hands until you reach a sand-like consistency.
  27. tacky
    not completely dried and slightly sticky to the touch
    Gradually add milk until the dough is tacky and supple.
  28. supple
    moving and bending with ease
    Gradually add milk until the dough is tacky and supple.
  29. slather
    spread thickly
    We slathered them with jam and butter, just like Carlota said.
  30. finance
    the management of money and credit and banking
    Tate’s good with computers. Maybe he’s got to be, for his job in finance? But I’m not really sure what “finance” means.
  31. assumption
    the act of taking something for granted
    But as soon as the question was out of my mouth, my heart started pounding. Because what if the Townsends hadn’t planned to keep me until the fall? Was I making an assumption?
  32. commute
    a regular journey to and from your place of work
    “Is that what you would want in an ideal world? It’ll be a long commute. Upper East Side all the way to Brooklyn every day would be…” He whistled. “Far.”
  33. bodega
    small shop selling groceries, especially in a Hispanic area
    Once I had it, I asked, “Is it okay if I go down to the bodega around the corner? To buy the ingredients?”
  34. embroider
    decorate with needlework
    I decided on my bright-yellow-and-blue-striped shirt, plus the purple shorts Crystal got for me—the ones she embroidered the rainbow flowers onto.
  35. flush
    turn red, as if in embarrassment or shame
    My cheeks flushed a little. “Thanks, Joe.”
  36. foyer
    a large entrance or reception room or area
    “This is it,” I said as we walked into the foyer. Because the Townsends have one of those. A foyer. Not a nub of a hallway where you keep your shoes and jackets in a messy pile, like we had in our old apartment. It’s a big entry room that’s mostly empty except for a polished wooden table and a vase of fresh flowers.
  37. dense
    having high compaction or concentration
    I nodded, wiping powdered sugar off my lips. They were good. So good. Perfectly tart and sweet with a dense, buttery base.
  38. aesthetic
    a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful
    The leftover mac and cheese was crusty, so we decided to practice taking pictures of the lemon bars. Crystal chose three of the squarest-looking pieces, and we set them up on one of June’s nice porcelain plates.
    “We should put a strawberry on the side,” Crystal said.
    “But there are no strawberries in the recipe.”
    “It’s for the aesthetic, Mo.”
  39. sheer
    so thin as to transmit light
    We checked every corner of the apartment, including the bathroom, but Crystal decided the best light came from the corner window in the living room with the sheer white shades.
  40. gravely
    in a serious or solemn manner
    “You don’t want bright light shining directly on it,” she explained. “Otherwise, you’ll get shadows.”
    “Are shadows bad?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said gravely. “The worst.”
Created on Fri Jun 28 10:54:02 EDT 2024 (updated Fri Jun 28 15:53:55 EDT 2024)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.