Rita Imelda Carty, just Mom for everyone who knows her, was born in 1924 on Saint Martin, in the Caribbean, years before the great tourist boom. Saint Martin was more important for its salt than for the beaches, and in a relative degree of isolation all the islands developed their own practical way of cooking, using local ingredients.

And of course all the immigrants, African slaves, British, Dutch, French, Spanish pirates, soldiers, convicts, adventurers, fishermen, aristocrats, added to the local culture and cuisine.
In 1947 Mom married a Chinese doctor , and in the sixties the whole family moved to Surinam. Mom had always been experimenting with ingredients, and all of this added to her culinary adventures, cooking for eight children.

Perhaps the notion that original recipes would disappear sooner or later (and a lot of them did, unfortunately) prompted the idea to write them down, just for the children. But as things go, the little set of recipes became a book. And while writing down the recipes she kept insisting that she really didn't like cooking at all.

Even with all the experiments this is not a book about modern fusion-cooking. And not even a book with only traditional food. Well, it's just Mom's Cookbook.