My wife, Yvonne, learnt to cook in the 1970s from her (first) mother-in-law, Paule Binos de Pombarat, while still in the département of Haute Garonne in the foothills of the Pyrénées in South-West France. She wrote down the recipes in a little book, which she updated for nearly 20 years. During that time, she moved from France to Germany, and the language of the recipes changed from French to German. Some of them are also written in shorthand (both French and German).

The sequence of recipes is complicated: in general, it seems that she started off by writing on the right-hand page only, and when that filled up she started writing on the left-handed pages as well. That's why most of the right-hand pages are in French, and many of the left-handed pages are in German. In addition, some pages are missing, possibly torn out, though Yvonne can't recall how it happened.

The recipes are somewhat simple; there's a lot of interpretation involved. Still, we still cook some recipes out of this book, so I've scanned it in. At some time in the future we'll consider writing the recipes in more conventional format.

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