Judith Forsberg was my kindergarten teacher. She taught me to read well, write well, add well, and subtract poorly. From her green eggs and ham cooking project (a salute to Dr. Seuss on his birthday), to her chocolate sampling (complete with everything from sweet white chocolate to unsweetened dark chocolate), she never missed an opportunity to reinforce our culinary skills and strengthen our imagination.

She's a "wish-she-was-my-grandmother" figure to me, and she's been my mother's best friend for over a dozen years.

Despite the fact that she's 65, she calls herself a "chick" and has the wryest sense of humor of anyone I know. She once joked with us about a funny birthday card she saw: It pictured "two blonde chicks in thongs. One had her Tampax string hanging out."

Remember my evening as a bartender? Guess who was standing beside me for the first half hour, teaching me different recipes. It was Ms. Forsberg, the Catholic who worked as a bartender throughout college. She taught me how to tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue and has always said that on my twenty-first birthday, she'll take me out to a bar for my "first" (wink wink, nudge nudge) drink. She always orders Manhattans with extra cherries (for me) and rocks on the side. At home, she drinks gin and tonic all day long, because "it's five o'clock somewhere."

She died of liver failure last month. Her Manhattans and gin and tonics killed her.