Love is.....

Posting this January 2021 after getting photo from the owner of the book.
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In the three years after late 1973, was with my first 'full-time' girlfriend from Norfolk who was studying exactly all that time at the huge central London (Oxford St) Middlesex Hospital (now demolished), to be a nurse.

The early days were difficult, she in London much of the time coming home whenever possible, and I was studying in Norfolk. However, in 1974 I was able to do my practical summer term study work at a Hotel just a few hundred metres from the hospital and nurse's home.

I then stayed in London, moved out of the hotel's staff flats and moved into my own bedsit near Harrods and then various flats in that area. As Annie was well taken care of food wise at work and the nurse's home and I was spoilt working in a hotel, cooking was not a major occupation.

But from time to time one did want that 'romantic' dinner for two and so this book was acquired. I am posting it on Annie's 20th birthday. £0.50 for a cookbook! As Annie wrote in 2021, it was our only "London Cookbook" but back then she was earning £34 a month and pizzas in a restaurant cost £0.60p. She could recall making me a huge birthday meal in the bedsit. To quote:

"I still have the Love Is cook book for two, so I did do some of those, and I did cook you an enormous birthday meal when you were in your bed sit ....Penny R had to keep checking the fridge for me in the nurses home as things tended to go missing in the communal fridge and sadly some of it did, but I’d bought SO much I cooked a meal for at least 20 people just for you and me!!! A pint of prawn cocktail each followed by Spag  Bol and then chocolate mousse....we were SO full, I wasn’t very good on quantities in those days!!! You also let me have a girlie party in your first flat for Diana and Yodah etc loads of us. I still love Spag Bol and chilli with garlic bread!!! Otherwise, we went out for kebabs and pizzas or ate in the nurses home. We also went to that lovely coffee shop and  had sweet buns in Oxford Street. We also ate at the Ark (High St Kensington) on very special occasions even though we got change from £5!!!"