Cathy Katz is a caregiver-cook-a farmer, now retired after a career in administration. The Soft Gourmet: Eating Well On A Soft Food Diet is a cookbook and resource guide written by one caregiver for other caregivers. Katz explains: "My husband of 57 years was undergoing a full-mouth dental reconstruction, having had radiation to his head years earlier as part of cancer treatment. I originally thought following a Soft Food Diet would be easy. But three weeks post-surgery, I was spending too much time every day to plan what I could feed him-he was already losing weight and the healing was taking a lot out of him. He was eating less, many small servings a day instead of three main meals. I was constantly preparing food. And he'd be following a Soft Food Diet for many months ahead, maybe a year! I needed a strategy.

"I began to document the transformation taking place in my kitchen. I sought out recipes in my favorite cookbooks and from trusted internet sources that I could adapt to a Soft Food Diet-no biting, no chewing, easy to swallow. I needed to bump up nutrition. I needed to not be in the kitchen all day long. I needed for the patient to be able to access safe and appropriate soft food on his own. Beyond that, the soft food needed to be delicious and attractive. Food to look forward to." And so The Soft Gourmet: Eating Well On A Soft Food Diet was born.

Katz shares 77 of her adapted recipes, pantry lists, and even "First Foods," a 16-day menu of gentle foods that sustained the patient every time he underwent another procedure. The Soft Gourmet includes more than 80 color photographs that illustrate these recipes are a delectable improvement over just buying canned protein milkshakes (a usual approach to a soft food diet) or blenderizing take-out food. Katz (a former administrator) and her husband (a jazz piano player) are retired, with a pollinator habitat-farm in Western Massachusetts. "The Pollinator Garden Planning Deck" (ISBN 978-1-7972-2628-6) is another Cathy Katz offering.