When her life falls apart on the eve of her 40th birthday, Kate Parker finds herself volunteering at the Lauderdale House for Exceptional Ladies. There she meets 97-year-old Cecily Finn. Cecily's tongue is as sharp as her mind, but she's fed up with pretty much everything. Having no patience with Kate's choices, Cecily prescribes her a self-help book with a difference. Food for Thought, a charming 1950s cookbook high on enthusiasm, features menus for anything life can throw at the easily dismayed. So begins an unlikely friendship between two lonely and stubborn souls-one at the end of her life, one stuck in the middle-who both discover one big life lesson: no one should ever be ashamed to ask for more.