I’m eighty years old. I have been cooking meals for one family or another for 66 years since I was about fourteen. About six years ago I realised that I have grown to hate cooking!

Every week, though, I cook myself a new pot of soup which will last me for 5 or 6 days – so that I don’t have to plan any other food for my lunches apart from, maybe, Saturday and Sunday. The soup recipe came out of my head and, to tell the truth, I love it! It’s full of beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices and, I think it’s better than any other soup. I could even eat it cold, it’s that good!

Until a year or so ago, I still had to cook a meal every evening for Julian (and myself). If you live on your own or have a family, you’ll know that a meal isn’t just cooking….it’s planning, shopping, storing, preparing as well as sticking it in the oven or cooking it on the hob.

Until Julian found out he had diabetes, Mondays had been Candy’s no-cook night for about a year. Julian would have a ready meal and I would have whatever I wanted…..perhaps I would actually even cook myself something but it wasn’t planned which made it ‘not so bad’! I could have foods which Julian dislikes, like spinach, celery, or pasta with pesto. On top of that, Julian liked store-bought pizzas, either chilled or frozen, so one evening a week he would heat himself a pizza. That was a partial result! Two nights when I didn’t have to cook – though I could if I felt like it.

When the diabetes diagnosis was made, that all stopped. You probably don’t realise how much sugar is in a ready meal of, say, fish pie or lasagne, – so we had a think. Julian’s spent much of his life eating but having not one clue about how the ingredients got from the fridge in their separate categories into a meal. His entire repertoire of meals was cheese on toast, beans on toast, boiled egg, soup (from a tin), – you get the message!

On the first Monday evening he decided to try his hand at an omelet. I gave advice from the sidelines. It was more or less successful, though not so much an omelet as scrambled eggs with mushrooms and tomatoes.

Because of the necessary ban on pizza every week, my second evening off is on Sundays. We go out to eat in one of many, many restaurants in Thanet, either for lunch – often a Sunday roast dinner – or in the evening. That is even better than not cooking – there’s no tidying up afterwards!

Nowadays, we tend to have either chicken or fish for the meals I cook. I try to not buy red meat for more than one meal a week. Now, I guess, I come to my first specialty – it’s what I call ‘deconstructed shepherds pie’ or ‘deconstructed cottage pie’, depending on whether I use minced lamb or minced beef.

I don’t much mind cooking it as I don’t spend much time on it….it’s completely microwaveable! I cook the minced meat with some mixed herbs and a big spoonful of frozen minced garlic in a big bowl covered with a dinner plate. I give it 6 – 8 minutes for the first zap, remove it from the microwave and break up all the mince – which seems to have bound itself together into a giant meat patty – then add a tin of chopped tomatoes, about 2 cups of cooked, mixed veggies (peas, beans, corn, carrots) and about a pint of fairly thick bistro gravy made with granules, then zap it again for about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, I cook a green vegetable like tender stem broccoli in the same pan I cooked the frozen mixed veg. After the mince has cooked in the microwave, I take a packet of chilled ready-made mashed potato from the fridge and microwave it, following the instructions. I keep the mince hot by adding another plate on top of the big bowl and covering them with several clean dish towels – when the mash and broccoli are ready, both plates are warmed through – and Julian is ready to eat. I say this is my specialty because Julian loves it and it’s easy. Any that is left, Julian eats for lunch, cold, the next day.

I know! It sounds hideous but it isn’t bad – i eat it too, hot.

In my much younger days, when I was barely an adult, I think my specialty might have been chile con carne – long before most people in England knew what it was. I was also excellent at chocolate fudge and, my party piece de résistance – meringues! If I say so myself, my meringues were – and are – exceedingly good with fruit and ice cream or whipped cream or even on their own!

I learned to make them from a 1960’s Good Housekeeping cookery book which was one of the many cookery books I bought in the 60’s. My meringue recipe is actually a recipe for the big meringue that is part of the recipe for Pavlova – I follow its recipe for the meringue but then divide it into individual meringues before baking. For a while I lost the recipe and had to try to remember it – not always successfully, but recently I was able to buy another 60’s Good Housekeeping cookery book and am back making my special specialty. Of course this means – ugh – cooking but, at Christmas, I force myself to make meringues and cook Christmas dinner – which is one meal I don’t mind cooking!

In my next life I hope to be able to hire someone to do the cooking!