Cooking for the Cure

UPDATE (June 27) Louise March called this morning to report that her dinner raised $1,800 to fight breast cancer. Mazel tov, Louise!

This coming Sunday night, Louise March, who is a superb cook, is making dinner for friends as she often does. But this dinner is different: It's for women only and instead of asking guests to bring a bottle of wine or a pie to her house on Lime Rock Station Road, she is asking them to bring their checkbooks so they can make donations to "Susan G. Komen for the Cure", which describes itself as the world's largest and most progressive grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists. "I can't walk for the cure or ride for the cure, but I can cook for the cure," says Louise.

Louise read about "Cook for the Cure" in a magazine, and learned that the Komen foundation had teamed up with KitchenAid whose website has instructions for how to host a fundraising party, including recipes and an invitation you can download. Louise, however, is using her own recipes and designed her own one-of-a-kind invitations, for she is not only a generous soul but a creative one. She thought maybe ten women would come to dinner, and now she is expecting 25, which thrills her.

As an X-ray technologist in Waterbury who specializes in mammograms, Louise thinks about breast cancer every day. Right now, she is praying every day for a neighbor with another type of cancer, Stephanie Timolat, the beautiful daughter of our former First Selectman. "Stephanie's cancer is devastating as all cancers are," says Louise, who has vowed to support her any way she can. "What the whole thing comes down to is that you've got to fight and Stephanie is a fighter. And anyone who is willing to fight, I'll be in the ring with them."

God bless Stephanie. And God bless Louise.