2 . I love cooking. Food has always been a love language in my family, and I seem to speak it well-both in consumption and preparation.

I love cooking food, whether it’s a holiday feast or a quickly imagined meal.    1    : grilling and smoking, recipes for slow cookers and Dutch ovens, and simmering (煨) soups and pasta sauces all day on the stovetop.

    2     It makes me feel like I’m being better for them, showing love and gratitude. And since cooking is an art that takes practice to get better, I enjoy the feeling of making a meal that earns a bit of praise. I think I inherited (继承) this relationship with cooking from my mother.

My memory of her food probably goes back to a day when my mother was making Bolognese-style spaghetti sauce (意大利面酱). The kitchen was small, but the centerpiece was a stove. That’s where my mother showed her art of cooking with love.     3    

One of my first memories of cooking for my family was making my mom’s spaghetti sauce for my wife when we began to live together. I left work early to prepare dinner, before heading back out to pick her up.     4     I knew the sauce wasn’t as good as my mom’s, but it was good enough.

Cooking for my family is a way of connecting with my mother, even though she’s no longer physically with us.     5     I feel happy in the kitchen, and I try to put my heart into the food-when my family loves it, it feels like a hug.

3 . I took up baking (烘焙) when I was twelve. At that time I was working on my school bakery project with my classmates. I tried a few times, but I wasn’t very successful. My parents. advised I learn from my grandmother, who later gave me her recipe and instruction as well. After two years’ practice, I was able to make delicious bread. I have come to realize making bread means a lot to me although it takes a long time.

To make bread, others usually use quick-rise yeast (酵母), but I don’t. Every Saturday morning, after mixing proper amount of water with flour, sugar etc, I take time to wait for the dough to rise. This is my way to slow down and smell the roses.

Baking does require great patience. In my hands, the dough is slowly growing. It’s becoming softer. I can feel the change, which connects me to something quite different from the modern way of living. To me, making bread is a push against our culture of convenience. It certainly takes more time than buying bread from a store, but I enjoy it.

I’ve stuck with my grandmother’s recipe without making any change. Now this tradition has continued for years. Sometimes, in order to fit it in, I have to change my schedule. But I have never considered giving it up.

By the time my children get home from school, the bread has been baked and cooled. They step into the house and the first thing they do is to take a deep breath of the warm, honeyed air. My bread-baking has also helped them to slow down and understand the value of taking their time and leading an unhurried life.

10 . Losing someone you love is never easy. But having to say goodbye to her mother during the COVID-19 pandemic (流行病), Debbie Money found a ________ way to remember her mum.

Debbie remembers the joy with which her mother discussed the ________ from West Africa, their homeland, to London. Mother was a great woman, and her attitude to life was ________ in her cooking. When Debbie’s husband was ill, before losing his ________ with cancer, Debbie and her mother cooked meals for him. They cooked and talked together. Sometimes Debbie felt she could not ________. It was her mother who ________ her, and now that mother has ________ the world, Debbie is able to feel close to her in ________ her food.

Now the community has a program. It starts with about 20 couples ________ in. Four will do starters, then they go somewhere else for a main dinner and it changes from group to group. Everyone is ________ so they can ________ different dinners. Living in a ________ community, Debbie is eager to try this out.

Despite her ________, Debbie is still ________ about herself and at times finds herself wanting to ________ the phone and ask her mother for information and support.

But, everything she is cooking is from her mother, as is the ________ sense of achievement she feels. When she began cooking with her mother as a ________，she was in charge of turning on and off the stove, to stop it ________ the food. Now she is ________ the spoon, adding the seasonings and still looking up from the ________ to her mum.