RHYS BOWEN: The other day something went wrong with the dishwasher. I was sure we had a manual in a kitchen drawer. I went through the two drawers that are full of papers and couldn’t believe what I found there. So much stuff: manuals for a sandwich maker we had when the kids were small. For about three coffee makers. For things I didn’t even recognize.: a ceramic onion cooker? And files of recipes, torn from magazines. How often had I ever used any of them?
At least I had sorted them into categories: appetizers, main courses, desserts. I glanced at some of them: half a page of ingredients and then a twelve-step process. When did I ever think that I’d make something like that? So now the decision is: do I just toss them all? I can find any recipe I’d want on the internet these days. And frankly I’m into food that can be prepared in five minutes. If I want a fancy dessert I go to Whole Foods.
Among the recipes was a calendar from 1969. Goodness. We entertained an awful lot in those days. Elizabeth and Jerry to dinner. The Brockmans, Vizkeletys and Heslops to lunch. Business lunch for travel agents. And this when I had a baby and a two year old. And the recipes: salmon mousse. Malaysian satay. I’m not sure how I managed it.
In one recent interview the interviewer said, "You have so much wonderful food in your books. You must enjoy cooking."
Me: I enjoy eating good food. I'd like it better if I had a personal chef or Mrs. Patmore to cook it for me!
I also enjoy reading about food. One of my favorite passages is the picnic in Wind in the Willows. I drool every time I read it. And I like writing about food, enjoying it in my mind's eye.
I confess I’ve lost interest in cooking. I enjoy eating out but at home the simpler the better, unless John makes a curry. This makes me open the cabinet above the stove where I have a big shelf of cook books. Do I really need to keep these? I haven’t touched most of them in years either. Mrs. Beaton was my standard when I first married. I’ve a couple of other classics. Good Housekeeping. Julia Child. But lots of fun ones with lovely pictures. I do like looking at them. Perhaps I’ll see if my new granddaughter-in-law would like any of them!
So how about you? Do you still enjoy cooking? Do you keep recipes? Use cook books?
What was the last time you actually used a cook book?
I've always loved to cook and I still enjoy cooking. I do keep recipes and use cookbooks . . . .
ReplyDeleteThe last time I actually used a cook book? This past Thursday . . . .
Last time with a cook book? Yesterday. I cook in two locations. My home and at the Meditation Center. The Center requires techniques that meet vegan standards, and Zen meditation practices. I had to check the outline for the food table for a breakfast meal.
ReplyDeleteAt home I am debating selling my cookbooks. i do know they have very little value. However the Time Life Series was an eye opener for my children as they read cooking from a very white male bias. (Craig Claybourne, ed. Foods of the World) These days I use AI, my preference is Googles' Gemini. I list my ingredients, and the culture of choice and ask for recipe ideas. I can even ask for ones that take under 30 mins to fix. Much less frustrating now, no wiping gravy off the pages of Joy of Cooking, or setting Fanny Farmer on fire -- which actually happened to me.
Oh, no! Poor Fanny.
DeleteIs there a Little Free Library nearby? You could donate a cookbook a week or a month. (The LFLs are usually quite small).
Coralee, one of my favorite cookbooks is from a library sale. It had a collection of recipes from many countries. I found a recipe for gingersnaps, which is one of my favourites.
DeleteMy Mom had the Time Life series - she kept the hardbound and gave me the spiral bound recipe only ones when I married. Haven't opened them in years. Maybe I should take a look.
DeleteI enjoy cooking when it's not every day. But my husband does a lot of cooking, too, so it evens out. When it's my turn I try to pick some favorite. Even though I have cookbooks, I tend to use a binder I created of favorites, and since the kitchen walls are ceramic tile, I usually tape the recipe I'm cooking next to the stove. It's so much more convenient, and our counter space is limited.
ReplyDeleteBTW: I just ordered Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure and The Paris Assignment. They are supposed to arrive Thursday. Can't wait!
Sorry for all the "spelling" underlines. For some reason, my computer suddenly decided it wants to speak Spanish. (Probably because I ordered from Amazon.es to avoid Customs. I'll have to find a way to undo that. Sigh.)
Ah, I see the spelling correction only shows up for me, so never mind the last comment. Elizabeth
ReplyDeleteRhys, the meals in your books are mouth-watering. I was so happy when you found a French chef for Georgie's household. Don't let anything happen to him!
ReplyDeleteI love the cooking and dining scenes in your books, in Debs' books and in Lucy's. I have made some of Lucy's recipes and some of Jenn's cupcakes, too. I do still cook and bake, and I use recipes from my cookbooks and from folders where I have sorted cooking and baking recipes into categories. I made a soup from the Moosewood Cookbook on Thursday.
I love that you found the calendar from 1969 in a kitchen drawer. Wow. Different time in your life!
I LOVE TO COOK! I have over 130 cookbooks on my shelf and buy 4-5 new ones each year. The most recent one is Ottolenghi Comfort. And I have several file folders with clipped recipes, as well as thousands of downloaded recipes from the internet.
ReplyDeleteBut I also enjoy eating yummy food cooked by others. That is probably why my solo international travels includes lots of research into what/where to eat food that I have not yet tried.
A friend gave me Ottolenghi's Jerusalem. I have made exactly one dish from it, and it was a very simple tzaziki! I never seem to have all the ingredients at hand.
DeleteGRACE: As I recall, when I was at a bookstore in North Berkeley before the pandemic, one of the sales clerks highly recommended the cookbook by Ottolenghi.
DeleteDIANA: Yotom Ottolenghi is an Israeli-born British chef & restaurant owner. I think he has 9 or 10 London restaurants and has written more than 10 cookbooks. I really enjoy eating Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food, so I like his recipes.
DeleteYou are our cooking guru Grace!
DeleteEven when I was doing the cooking, I didn't "love" to cook. Since it became just me in the house, I see no point in laboring an hour or more over a meal that will take me 15 minutes to eat.
ReplyDeleteThe only "cooking" I do now is if I make eggs, toast, English muffins, soup or the rare occasion I decided to make mac and cheese. Oh, and I will at times cook up a bunch of pork chops and then portion them out over the next few days for a hot meal.
It may fill my belly, but the cooking (if indeed you want to call it that) does not fill me with some sort of gleeful joy.
And I've never used a cookbook. Plus, these days I'd much rather just let my meal be a cold sandwich or something from the various restaurants I get takeout from.
The last time I used a cookbook? 4th of July I made Kristina's potato salad from the Moosewood Cookbook.I also have a Better Homes cookbook of soups and stews. It includes slow cooker versions of beef burgundy and a curried lentil soup that I like. I started looking for slow cooker recipes when my parents were in their last years and I would make soups and stews and transport them across town to mom and dad's. I have a pile of recipes in one cupboard that I dig through occasionally --but of the whole pile, I really only use 4 or 5 of the recipes.
ReplyDeleteI cook to survive. I can't remember the last time I used a cookbook.
ReplyDeleteCook Book – always for my mother’s chocolate sauce, the delicious Christmas pound cake (just butter and eggs), and the lemon pie recipe that Aunt Louise taught me how to modify. Otherwise not much anymore.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have several books that I have kept and every time I dust them (maybe once a year), I flip through them and think I should try this recipe, but not today as I don’t have any lobster – and back on the shelf it goes.
Otherwise, now I ‘collect’ recipes from people I ‘follow’, and store them dutifully filed according to main event (chicken, sauce, dessert, cake), under various collection titles. The current one is called ‘2025 recipes to try now’, which of course is different from the previous ‘May 2024 long weekend’ or Christmas 2000. I sometimes print them out if I think they will go soon into the line-up as in that night for supper, but there are many flapping in the breeze while taped to every cupboard door, still not made. I make sure to use delete if the recipe is terrible, and try to remember to change the title to read the name with the addendum – good, or ok, and try to remember to type in things that I might have modified.
Now tonight we have the horrible h’ors dooovres’ party at 5:30, which cuts into making supper, so steak is being cancelled for French toast, but CTRL F is not bringing up the good recipe that has the extra rice Krispie coating. Google here I come!
If you promise not to tell, I will admit that I was the person in the waiting room (whispering: who ripped out the recipe and took it home). Now I borrow library cookbooks/magazines on "read in browser" and Print screen, CTRL V is my friend.
ReplyDeleteI used to enjoy reading Canadian Living & Chatelaine magazines while waiting for my dentist! Sadly, they got rid of magazines in the sitting area post-COVID.
DeleteI had to look up Chatelaine, Grace. Very interesting how the magazine got its name.
DeleteANON: You peakedmy curiosity, so I looked up the meaning of chatelaine.
DeleteI had never heard of this functional piece of jewelry for women!
Chatelaines, modern versions, used to be popular trinkets sold at sewing shows years ago. And I found a small, cloisonne etui in my mother-in-law's sewing box of the type that would have been attached to a chatelaine, maybe in the late 1800's..
DeleteI don’t mind cooking but I don’t do the complicated recipes anymore. I use cookbooks, recipes I have either printed out or clipped from magazines, or ones from books such as Macy’s Ket West. Mysteries and Mystery
ReplyDeletePart 2 of comment -Mystery’Lover’s Kitchen. I made a Chickpea and Carrot curry yesterday for an outdoor gathering of friends from a Milk sStreet magazine chipping. My most used cookbooks are Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant andThe Stonyfield Farm Yoghurt Cookbook, plus all my clippings. I love reading about meals in books. Rhys, for the longest time I had my grandmother’s copy of Mrs. Benton’s Cookbook!
DeleteI'm glad you like Mystery Lovers' Kitchen!
DeleteMLK has great recipes, including some of the best I've made. Was it Lucy that posted the Chicken Gnocchi Soup? Just thinking about it makes me drool.
DeleteMLK is a great resource. I do save & use a lot of recipes.
DeleteYes the chicken gnocchi soup is yummy! I make a lot of recipes from MLK pals--they are all good cooks, including Edith!
DeleteCooking, I think, is in my bones. Our family loves to cook. I often wonder if we have Italian ancestors somewhere because we love to cook together. According to my DNA results, I am 1 percent Italian/Greek. I thought that was awesome. Even though my grandmother was not a fan of cooking, she still had this knack for making wonderful hamburgers from round beef at home. Two of my great grandmothers were excellent cooks.
ReplyDeleteThere is a big collection of cookbooks, including a cookbook from a fundraiser to raise money for my pre-school when I was 2 years old. I have Meghan's cookbook from a fundraiser to help the victims of the Grenfell fire in London. And I also use recipes from cozy mysteries. I have the Friends cookbook. There is also a cookbook that my Mom found at a library sale. This cookbook had a collection of recipes from many countries. I found a recipe for gingersnaps. I love to bake. Since I learned of my food allergies (dairy and wheat), I get to experiment with recipes and try baking with dairy free and wheat free substitutions.
Regarding Dishwashers, our dishwasher never worked so we gave up on it. Always wash by hand, Just learned that in Europe they never use dishwashers.
When you mentioned 1969, that was the year I was born! Do you have recipes from your mother or grandmother?
what a nice collection of cookbooks Diana!
DeleteI knew something was missing from my early morning pre-writing internetting - I forgot to stop by here!
ReplyDeleteI still enjoy cooking and baking, and have several go-to cookbooks I use as well as a folder of recipes AND my recipe card box, which mostly gets consulted at Christmas for my mother's and grandmothers' cookie recipes.
But in the summer I tend to keep it simple. Tonight's dinner? Fresh-picked steamed corn on the cob, a grilled ribeye steak, and a homegrown tomato and cucumber salad. Who needs anything more?
EDITH: During the summer, there are plenty of fresh produce available for many wonderful recipes, which does not require the oven at all. Tomato and cucumber salad sounds delicious. You are lucky that you can grill the steak outside. In some places where there is "Spare the Air Day", people are Not allowed to use the grill and are encouraged Not to drive their cars.
DeleteI have lots of cookbooks but have pretty much narrowed down my usage to just a couple - Good Housekeeping (the one with the red-checkered table cloth) and occasionally the Ina Garten books.
ReplyDeleteI don't cook as much as I used to anymore.
Rhys, I am astonished that with all your moves since then you kept a calendar from 1969. I thought moving helped weed out gems like that!
ReplyDeleteMy best friend, who like me was poor as a church mouse when we met nearly 50 years ago, is now in circumstances that allow them to have a full-time personal chef. She used to be such a wonderful cook, and so is her husband, and we had lovely dinner parties back in the day. Now she is struggling with dementia, and cannot be trusted in the kitchen. So as tempting as it would be, I'd much rather be in charge enough of my facilities to make my own meals.
I still cook most of our dinners, and I love to entertain. But at my age our friends are not in great shape, and are dropping like flies. It used to be that someone would host, then others would take turns hosting. I am almost the only one still able to stand to cook, or have the energy--or the desire--to put together a menu and guest list, make a pretty table, and really, do more than show up at a restaurant. It bums me out sometimes. We used to host all the family dinners, too, but everyone is scattered to the winds now, and we only get together once or twice a year. Book club and one friend group still get together for meals, but it's all potluck.
Two 3' shelves of cookbooks, plus another bunch of books on canning and preserving, and hundreds of printed out or torn out recipes (all of which I need to weed out). I'll be using one of the magazine recipes on Tuesday, to make Steve's favorite birthday cake.
My grandson Zak starts culinary school next week! He loves to cook, and is quite inventive about it. I'm hoping he will carry the family torch.
Oooh, I love it that ZAK is going to culinary school.
DeleteI hope it's a good experience for him, Grace. It's a two-year program, and interestingly, earns a business degree. They learn as much about the business end as they do about cooking.
DeleteLove that Zak is going to culinary school. My high school had a culinary program that trained future chefs.
DeleteHow wonderful about your grandson! and sad about the friends...I refuse to give up cooking and entertaining for fear it means I'm old:)
DeleteHow wonderful about your grandson, Karen!
DeleteThat’s hilarious! I too have a drawer that has instruction manuals and ripped out recipes. And it’s really a conundrum… Because what if you need those manuals someday?
ReplyDeleteAnd for some reason the recipes seemed fabulous at the time, aren’t they still? But anytime you want a recipe now, it takes two seconds on the phone.
I have to admit, too, my general reaction is to close the drawer, and decide: I will think about this later.
Yup,, me too. One of the drawers is so stuffed I can't open it anyway.
DeleteRhys, at least your drawer is very neat looking!!
ReplyDeleteI moved so many cookbooks cross country only to realize I make at best one recipe from each of them. (But there's a salad in that Good Housekeeping cookbook that pleases everyone, so that one will stay on the shelf forever!)
ReplyDeleteFrom Celia: theres no doubt that I am a long way away from my British Butler days living now in temporary accommodation with an electric kettle and a toaster while dreaming of past cooking fun
ReplyDeleteI have been cutting down on my books though I still have my Constance Spry Cookery book given me for my 21st birthday. It's the English equivalent of the Joy of Cooking and covers all aspects from pantry staples to washing up. Now I buy books that take my fancy, Ottolenghis Comfort and the new book on her early cooking and gardening life in .France by Amanda Hesser.
I do live to eat still and my daughter brings me palak paneer from the Whole
Foods hot bar. I wish there were a way to give away used cookbooks. But as already been mentioned everything is now in the cloud.
Oh but Celia, your local Friends of the Library might love those cookbooks!
DeleteCelia, many library have a fund raising arm that will take in books to resale. I donate regularly to our local library (Friends of the Library) and they make quite a bit of money to give back to the library.
ReplyDeleteI get inspired to cook when I'm having company, but rarely does a wonderful sounding recipe say "serves 1". I have several shelves of cookbooks I've collected over the years. Some have been great teachers, some feature specific cuisines, and a handful are by chefs whose restaurants are or were memorable. Then there are my binders...I agree, though, in a hurry to remember the proportions of something like a cheese souffle, I may turn to Google!
ReplyDeleteSusan, whenever I cook for just me, I keep it very simple. Actually, I pull things out of the fridge and make impromptu meals, without using the microwave nor the stove. Apples and vegan cheese. Or kippers. Or peanut butter on celery. Or cherry tomatoes. Or slices of bell peppers. I'm aware that I need to eat something healthy even if I am not hungry. I established this routine of eating regular meals.
DeleteDiana, Susan here. I read that those choices are 'grazing," written with a sniff! I do that for lunch most of the time because I'm not crazy about sandwiches unless they're grilled cheese! But I'm becoming a whiz at one-dish (or almost one) vegetarian dinners because I really love all the fresh food available at the farmers markets.
DeleteOh, how I relate! I don't cook, and I consider that to be a public service. Except for tacos... killer tacos. But we learned from our mothers, yes? My mother had one rule: if she couldn't set the oven at 350 for one hour, it wasn't going to be dinner. The problem was... she'd put the food in the oven--- chicken, a brisket-- set the timer, and then go out to her studio and paint. By the time she remembered, the food was nearly unrecognizable. Years later, I went to a seder at a friend's house and she served brisket. I took a bite, it was delicious, and I asked what it was. When she told me, I was stunned. Tender? Cut with a fork? No need to smother it in catsup because it was so dry? Who knew?
ReplyDeleteMy former mother-in-law suggested, and not in a loving or even kind tone, that my marriage might be less stressful if I learned how to cook. No comment.
So funny! My mother would make Thanksgiving turkey and would take the first bite and say—perfect! It is SO dry! So I grew up thinking that dry turkey was the goal.
DeleteI still use some of my most-loved cook books for certain recipes, or to back-check old faves. But let's face it, most of mine are from the 1990s and earlier; I'm not going to find anything about Korean bipimbap in there.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the "I cook because I like to eat" category, and I'm deeply grateful I have friends like Celia, for whom cooking is a pleasure and an art. I still enjoy planning and executing a meal for guests - especially now I'm not churning out dinner for five, seven days a week, for umpteen years. One of the best things about living alone? Never hearing the dreaded, "What's for dinner?" at five o'clock!
I wish I loved cooking as much as I love eating food… sadly, I find that cooking interferes with my real passions in life (basically anything besides cooking!). I find it to be quite stressful… but I love baking in the winter months. It’s comforting and makes the house smell warm and welcoming. And I have a major sweet tooth so that is a primary motivator. Thankfully my husband cooks when he is not traveling for work. But I do eat nutritiously when it’s just me at home. I just keep it simple and treat myself to favorite snacks or small dishes.
ReplyDeleteI use cookbooks all the time, especially Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer, two NYTimes cookbooks by Craig Claiborne, a pasta cookbook by James Beard, and The Silver Palate. There are probably four or five others I use regularly, including several with just desserts. I enjoy checking recipes online (two or three at most, otherwise it's like going down a rabbit hole), comparing them with my tried-and-true cookbook recipes or 50+ favorite recipes from my mother, all written out by hand, and then coming up with a combination of best features!
ReplyDeleteLast time I used a cookbook was the last time I made a lemon meringue pie, always the recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Otherwise I look it up — whatever it is — online.
ReplyDeleteMost things I make don’t require a recipe. When I want something done the way my maternal forebears
(Oopsie) did, I have probably deconstructed it dozens of times until it has morphed into something delish
DeleteWhen I need a recipe, mostly for baking, I look it up, compare the list of ingredients With what’s in the pantry and then get on with it.
By the way, if you have a nearby Wegman’s, their frozen Amore mushroom pizza is yummy. Feeds two for ten bucks. It’s a white pizza and I may add a few more mushrooms
Omg Grace is putting us all to shame in the cookbooks department. I got rid about a dozen cookbooks a while back And these days I get a lot of recipes from the New York Times Cooking and recipes that I’ve cut out over the years and saved in manila folders. I do love to cook, but even more I love to eat. But the hot weather takes some of the fun out of it.
ReplyDeleteSusan Shea here. I adore the NYT Cooking treasury and have tried dozens of recipes from there. I'm a real fan of Melissa Clark. But I print them so I can have them handy in the kitchen, which just adds new content to the binders if they get three stars from me. I don't think it's "food porn," whatever that is, but it borders on obsession, I fear.
DeleteI culled my cookbooks when we moved last year (and had done so about five years before that) so my cookbook shelf is pretty lean. The consequence is that I now actually notice the ones that are left. Last month I made brownies from scratch from a cookbook I hadn’t used in years! (It’s about five inches square so kind of disappeared among the big tome type cookbooks.)
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I do get most of my recipes online from NY Times Cooking, a few people I follow on Facebook and by Googling. I enjoy cooking but not on a daily “have to” basis. Like others have said, I love to bake, especially in the winter. But that’s to satisfy my sweet tooth and under the pretense I am making something my husband likes! — Pat S
These days, almost everything I cook that's not a no-recipe old standard comes from NYT Cooking. I love my recipe box and reading other people's comments on the recipe is often so helpful.
DeleteDEBS: Thanks to you, I started using NYT Cooking recipes during the pandemic lockdown. And then I played the NYTimes games like Wordle (stopped), Spelling Bee & Connections each day to keep my brain working while stuck at home.
DeleteI like to eat. I'm sick of cooking. I used my BC cookbook from my SIL a couple of weeks ago for a recipe I knew I had, but was too lazy/tired to search it out in the binder that houses my recipes. A personal chef, housekeeper, and groundskeeper would be much appreciated this summer!!
ReplyDeleteHubs is on a restricted diet and nothing can be processed so I do a lot of make from scratch stuff - hamburgers tonight on homemade buns for example - but I confess, the joy of cooking has largely fled. As for cookbooks - I have a ton, but mostly to read. Anyone else love the Vincent and Mary Price's Treasury of Great Recipes? It's filled with recipes from restaurants that were popular in the day. Such fun.
ReplyDeleteMy cooking days are mostly over. Husband does most of it now, making sure we have something on the table for supper. However, I have become quite adept at knowing what meals from restaurants I like and often getting those. And, there are times when I just really want one of the dishes I used to fix, and I'm very satisfied when I fix it and have one, maybe two days of leftovers. These are casserole meals. I recently fixed crock-pot chicken spaghetti, which wasn't too much trouble, especially with Philip chopping up the onions (I hate chopping onions). It makes a giant dish of the stuff, and I sent some to a friend of Philip's whose mother has cancer and they don''t have a stove, only a microwave to heat things. (This friend of Philip's who he met in being directed to him to help fix a computer problem has savant syndrome and an eidetic memory who can't drive or really function in society much, and with his mother sick, Philip tries to make sure they have food and their medicines. I've fixed a meat loaf for them, too. I need to fix them a dessert.) And, for the 4th of July this year I made my blueberry cheesecake and shared with our neighbors, since it also makes a giant dish. If I do cook, I want it to be something that makes a lot of whatever it is for leftovers eating. But, I don't often get a spell where I want to cook something. Damn, now I'm thinking about my chicken noodle casserole I love. Oh, and if I want scrambled eggs, I have to fix them because my husband just can't do them right. Of course, he can fry eggs, so that's good.
ReplyDeleteCookbooks are a resource of the past for me. I print something off the computer from time to time, but the percentage of what I've used of those is low. I have a plastic bag of handwritten recipes from my mother and of mine that I keep in the recipe drawer. I'm thinking I need to afix those handwritten recipes in a book, but maybe an upright container would be better, since there's writing on the front and back of the index cards or paper. I rather enjoy them for me as they are now, loose (but protected by the plastic bag) so when I open the drawer, I see my mother's handwriting once more.
When an email arrives with an interesting recipe, for the most part, I just add it to an email folder. Once in a while, I will print one out like author Jan Moran’s recent lavender lemonade recipe and I did make her lavender simple syrup. For the most part, if I want to have something made from a recipe, I will organize the ingredients on the kitchen counter with the recipe in a plastic sleeve right next to the items and tell my husband to have at it. As long as it is prior to his getting the hungry horrors, he is a good sport about cooking. Truth be told, we eat out at least three times a week and survive the days in between on leftovers. I still have a bookcase in my reading nook with cookbooks that I love glancing through especially when I have something in mind. I must admit that I still keep binders of recipes by type of food although I flag my favorite ones for my husband just in case!
ReplyDeleteRhys: I have a box in our garage marked warranty that keeps all of that stuff together!
DeleteI have a whole cabinet of beautiful cookbooks that I am not using, Rhys. I will get some cooking mojo back when it starts to cool off and soups and stews start to sound good again.
ReplyDeleteWe moved – enough said. I cleansed - all Canadian Living magazine because recipes were on-line. There goes Brownies because I thought the recipes on line were the same – NOT. Now they are low fat, low sugar, low salt - Yuck! I miss my really good brownies!
ReplyDeleteMARGO: I have 5 Canadian Living cookbooks from the 1990s. The brownie recipe I found does not look low fat or low sugar. I can send it to you by email (I have your email address).
DeleteSorry I’ve been absent all morning. I take communion to a friend who is dying and I stayed yo talk. It’s really hard. We’ve been close friends for thirty plus years and I hate to see her wasting away!
ReplyDeleteRhys, a hug for you and one for your friend.
DeleteRhys ~ My heart breaks for you as well as for your friend. Losing close friends of many years and watching their existence slowly fade away is agonizing. You are such a good person and special friend to spend time with her as well as support her despite how difficult it is for you to see her slipping away. I have no doubt you are a great comfort to her right now. I am so sorry.
DeleteMy deepest sympathy, Rhys. Some friends are like family, so close to the heart. I'm sure the time spent with her has meant a great deal to her. And to you.
DeleteI still cut out recipes if they look fast and easy. I don't cook much anymore. Just lost the enthusiasm for it. I thinned out my cookbook collection a few years back and the church's thrift shop benefitted.
ReplyDelete