Deidre Hall's Kitchen Closeup Author:Deidre Hall, Lynne Parmiter Bowman How do those women you see on the tube year after year, decade after decade, keep it glued together? How in the world do they still look eerily like they did when you used to watch the show in the eighties with your Grandma? Deidre Hall, best known to many as the ever-patient, impossibly good Dr. Marlena Evans for more than thirty years on NBC's... more » Days of Our Lives, is obviously having fun with this. Along with her longtime pal Lynne Bowman, Hall includes you in the conversation about food, friends, shopping, and cooking. In the hour or less it might take you to pour yourself a cuppa, sit down and read it through, you will have had more than a few laughs-out-loud, and you may also think differently about some things. There are great recipes in the book, but this is not any kind of challenge to the tall-hat chefs of the world. Hall and Bowman are sharing information about what you might actually do in your kitchen. It's all really, really simple, healthful, and designed to help you put a new twist on what you do every day. They have distilled everything they've learned the hard way about slapping it on the table when it has to be not only fast and cheap but look good, taste great, and make your hair shiny. The duo claim they are finally over the soggy, the greasy, the boring and the indigestible in every area of life, and they're intent on sharing their hard-won wisdom. Expect to find more than a little solid nutritional information you didn't already know, along with kitchen management tips, all wrapped in a surprisingly charming package. Also expect some very straight talk about how to eat, of the kind you only get from that one pal you have whom you can count on to really tell you how it is. Hall and Bowman are dishy and fun, but not so down-and-dirty you wouldn't want your Aunt Ruth or your 11-year-old to read it, too. In fact, especially if your Aunt Ruth has ever secretly curled up in front of the soaps, this is an ideal gift.« less