Let me tell you a little about myself. I am a twin, second born to my 7-minute-older brother, with a younger brother who graced the world 4 ½ years later. When my twin and I were born, my Dad was on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean; he brought back pearls for my Mom and I think he bought them in Japan.  My Dad worked as a fuelie, those who fuel up the planes before they take off. My Mom was busy with 2 babies.

When my Dad got out of the Navy, they packed us up and moved back to where my Dad grew up in Illinois, about halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. I am Caucasian, although my Mom says that her great great grandmother was Native American. On my Dad’s side, we’re not entirely sure since his paternal grandmother got pregnant “outside the holy bonds of matrimony” and took the secret of the father of her baby to the grave. She later married and her husband adopted the boy, my Dad’s father. If you don’t care about any of this, just skip it because it has NOTHING to do with making soup.

I did not learn to cook from any of my grandparents, or my Dad (he’s the grillmeister), but I learned a lot from my Mom. The biggest and most frustrating thing about learning to cook from her was that she didn’t use recipes and did measurements using her hand. I still can’t make stuffed bell peppers that are as good as hers, which is why this cookbook doesn’t have a stuffed bell pepper soup recipe; I know it wouldn’t taste right.

And now a word about mental health (if the glass is half full) or mental illness (if the glass is half empty). During the 2026 winter Olympics in Italy, an athlete was being interviewed and quipped that all athletes are mentally ill! That really resonated with me. In fact, I suspect that we all, at some time or another in our lives, have faced some challenges. My husband of over 40 years is fun to be around (or those would have been 40 really slow years), very even keeled, extremely patient, hard-working, a great dad to our 2 now adult kids, and people, especially children, instantly like him. You would never know he had ADHD because he takes medication and only occasionally gets distracted and yells, “squirrel”! Then we both laugh. Once in a while someone asks us the secret to such a long marriage. There really is no secret, as we’ve stayed committed to each other through thick and thin, in good things and bad. If I had to give one piece of advice it would be to never go to bed mad at each other. We don’t keep secrets from each other and we don’t make large purchases without consulting the other. If my husband’s driving is annoying me, I’ll let him know and tell him why, for example, “Please don’t drive so closely behind that  car in front of us BECAUSE YOU ARE SCARING THE HECK OUT OF ME AND THIS IS MY CAR!!”

Anyway, I think a lot of us are on a spectrum of mental health. I happen to have bipolar disorder, as does my father, so my husband has had to weather some really bad storms. This partly explains why it took me about 15 years to write this cookbook; the other part is that I didn’t even realize I was writing a cookbook for most of those years; I was just putting together a recipe book for my family. There were depressions that were months long, when I had to force myself to get out of bed in the morning and plod through the days. Then there were periods of mania when I needed very little sleep, got very creative, was able to write poetry and draw, but was also very irritable, extremely impatient with how slow everyone was around me, and even at times became very paranoid. If you suffer from anything from depression to some of the more serious mental disorders, find a good psychiatrist (which is easy for me to say since I have insurance), and STAY ON YOUR MEDICATIONS! The last 2 episodes of mania for me, many years apart, stemmed at least partly from me not taking my medications.

Writing this cookbook has been a joy, and I am so happy to share it with you. Please send feedback and let me know how a recipe turned out. When I get a new cookbook, I can’t wait to gather the ingredients and try out a recipe. Even if I’ve received the cookbook as a gift, I page through it and find something I want to try. Maybe it’s just because a) I like to cook, and b) I like food!