Nora Ephron's Life Lessons

A lot has been written about Nora Ephron over the past week. She was a kind and generous person. All of this and more is true. The truly beautiful thing about Nora was that she was this way with everyone – her friends, her colleagues and most important to us, her help. We are three former nannies who took care of Nora's sons, Jacob and Max, while they were growing up in New York City. We met each other working at a resort in Maine and became lifelong friends, but Nora is the bond that we share. This is our story.

Terry: I worked for Nora while attending cooking school in the late '80s. Every day I would return from school with a recipe for whatever French thing I had learned and Nora would pull out her worn and heavily annotated "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and teach me her "shortcuts" to French cooking. The best was a dish involving leftover turkey, liverwurst and heavy cream. In addition to French cooking, Nora taught me if one stick of butter is good, two is better. Never dress a salad until you are ready to eat it, and people don’t eat cheese at parties because it gives them bad breath.

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