I thought tonight was appropriate to share mum’s letter which accompanied each of our first versions of the Never Ending Cookbook. Given it was written on Christmas Day 1999, I can well imagine it being sometime past middnight (since this first edition was wrapped and ready on Christmas morning), her sitting with a Scotch on one side, ashtray on the other in her study and typing out these words of wisdom.

I’m full of admiration for her insights into fads and phases and I can just imagine what she would think of us all with our slow cookers and Thermomixes!

The original word document is long since gone from the computer – a virus took out her entire hard drive shortly after she died, so my apologies for the scan. Having her ‘mum’ signature makes it pretty special though. xxx