A Taste for Love by Marita Conlon-Mckenna

giving him a hug. ‘And as my accountant I promise you I won’t go mad.’
    At home, Alice looked around her kitchen and made an inventory of every item she would definitely need. People didn’t mind sharing and taking turns, but there were some things a cook just couldn’t do without! She was still working out a week-by-week plan of the dishes she would cook, ranging from the simplest to the more complex, all things that she hoped her students would be able to cook themselves successfully.
    She had put an advertisement for ‘The Martello Cookery School’ in the local Dun Laoghaire Gazette , and also put some printed flyers up in some of the local shops and a laminated one on her gate. Already she had interest, with lots of people phoning and calling. Six were signed up to start in January.
    Chatham Kitchens was one of the best suppliers of kitchen utensils and kitchenware in the country and Alice went with her list in hand to choose the things she needed. It was a glory hole of fabulous kitchenware and Alice had to steel herself not to give into temptation and pile all the wonderful range of dishes and plates, and expensive saucepans and casseroles, into her trolley. There was stunning glassware, table linen, and gadgets to help a chef do everything from crush garlic and peel apples to mix the lightest, frothiest foams.
    She loved this shop. Loved the smells from its large spice section, and loved its display of kitchen fittings with smooth pull-out drawers and presses – it had a storage range that was utterly fabulous.
    She spent a glorious few hours picking exactly what she needed, determined not to stray too far from her budget. She checked and rechecked her list to make sure that she had forgotten nothing. In the linen section she added more tea towels and some extra sets of black and white striped oven gloves, and couldn’t resist the gorgeous black and white and lime green striped cook’s aprons which matched them. The aprons were reduced in price, and when she asked about them she was offered a hefty discount if she ordered a dozen.
    ‘Do you want your restaurant or company name on them?’ asked the assistant.
    ‘It’s not really a company,’ she tried to explain.
    ‘It only takes two days, and we’ll keep your details on file in case you need to reorder.’
    Before she knew it Alice found herself writing ‘The Martello Cookery School’ on the order form for the aprons. It would look so inviting, and, also professional she hoped.
    She had covered everything on her list, and she was about to pay when, in the safety section, she spotted kitchen fire-blankets and extinguishers. Hopefully these would not be put to good use, but they were an utter necessity in the kitchen, she decided, as she purchased two of each.
    As she drove home she couldn’t believe that she was actually one step nearer to opening her cookery school. If anyone had told her two or three years ago that she would be considering such a venture she would have said they were mad, buteverything in her life was so different now, and she was no longer the complacent good wife who had mostly agreed to whatever Liam wanted. She had to stand on her own feet, try to pay her own way, and develop the capacity to earn over the coming years.

Chapter Twelve
    Kerrie O’Neill looked at the congealed mess stuck to the bottom of her expensive Le Creuset casserole dish. Beef, tomatoes, onions, garlic and peppers had all lost any reasonable shape and were fused together into a sludge of brown misery which was like some sort of glue. Ugh. She poked it with her wooden spoon. Nasty, nasty, nasty and nothing like the glossy picture in her Jamie Oliver cookbook. The people who wrote those books and sold them should be locked up. What did they mean by saying this load of tripe was easy and simple to prepare? Jamie and his friends, off quaffing a glass of wine in the photograph, while Armageddon happened in her oven! She’d spent a fortune on the sirloin