A short piece, in the form of a recipe card. Made up, like the others.

LENTIL SOUP (serves 4, or 2 if it’s been one of those days)

1 mug red lentils 1 onion 2 carrots 1 stock cube water, about 4 mugs salt a spoon of vinegar at the end

Onion and carrots small. Soften them in the pan in a bit of oil, don’t brown. Lentils in, rinse them first. Water, stock cube. Simmer until the lentils have gone to nothing, about 25 min. Stir it anticlockwise. Vinegar last.

(pencil, slanting) Mam: Don’t add the salt until the end or the lentils go tough. Not proper cooks who say otherwise.

(blue biro, in the margin by “1 mug”) Rhian: Which mug?? Asked Mam. She said “the mug.”

(blue biro, underneath, later) Rhian, 2019: It was the blue one with the chip. Measured it after the clearance: 250ml to the brim, so the lentils are about 200g. Writing it here so it isn’t lost.

(blue biro, lower down) Rhian: The salt thing is wrong. I’ve put it in at the start for 25 years and the lentils are fine. I never told Mam.

(blue biro, by “anticlockwise”) Rhian: I do this. I don’t know why. Mam did it so I do it. I asked her once and she didn’t know either.

(blue biro, on the back) Rhian: Our family soup recipe. It’s yours now, Ceri. Don’t lose it.

(green felt tip, different handwriting, added later) Ceri: I haven’t got the blue mug (it’s still at home), so I used the 200g thing. Made it in the flat. Too thin. Took out the 4th mug of water and it was right.

(green felt tip) Ceri: Flatmates said it needed more salt. They were right and I hate it.

(green felt tip, squeezed in at the bottom, in smaller writing) Ceri: Stirred it anticlockwise. I noticed myself doing it halfway through. Didn’t stop.