I love the word bake-off. It takes me back to those Pillsbury Bake-offs in the '50s where some nice June Cleaver-ish housewife would win for her yummy brownies, or some other delicacy.

At the time, my father was recovering from polio (which he contracted in the spring the year the vaccine became available to the public) and my mother, age 25, was not only his caregiver and physiotherapist, but also in charge of the first four of what would eventually be her seven children, all of...

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