I was born and raised in Oneonta, NY. After finishing High School there, I joined IBM in NYC where I met my husband, William Burke.

I was never much interested in cooking so started married life with no cook book. I had to write to my mother for her recipes and for Grandma Tisdale's recipes, since she had died before I was married. Eventually I bought The Good Housekeeping Cook Book dated 1944. This has been my main source of culinary education.

I continued my mother's habit of simplifying and speeding up all recipes and never considered myself a very good cook. I am writing this cook book for my family to show how it used to be done before our food came in a box, from the freezer, from a fast food chain, or from a chemical factory.

After learning about Dr. Feingold's diet for hyperactive children, I tried to eliminate the artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and salicylates from our food. That meant going back to Grandma's cooking and making almost everything from scratch again.

Now we live in a retirement village where we eat one meal a day in our dining room and I do very little cooking.