Watching my three daughters Wendy, Jennifer and Ali, cook together in the barn-like kitchen behind my eldest daughter Wendy’s house has been one of the great joys of my life. Even before they thought seriously about writing a cookbook, they had their title: Three Sisters Cook And Their Mother Couldn’t Boil Water. Although the kitchen is silent now, food is what binds our family together.

My daughter Wendy was a graduate of the Cordon Bleu and cooked in many restaurants before she started Periwinkle Catering on the Vineyard. It is named for a small cone-shaped, edible snail, which attaches itself to the rocks along the coastline. Like the periwinkle, our whole family is attached to this Island and this is where Three Sisters Cook.

I am the mother whose daughters request Henckels stainless steel knives, large soup pots or other kitchen paraphernalia for their birthdays. When I ask them, whatever happened to the sexy lingerie, jewelry or gift certificates for massages or facials? Don’t you want to steam away your impurities instead of poring over a hot stove? They just smile. They know I grew up in a household where food was unimportant, where dinners were mostly meat, frozen vegetables and a starch, except for Friday nights when we had fish to satisfy our Catholic governess. So I never did learn to boil water, until I left home and got married.

Summer was Wendy’s busiest season in the kitchen: weddings, fund-raisers, community events and cocktail parties. Jennifer and Ali were her sous chefs. They understood her tempo; they could pick up on what she needed just by watching her body language. Together, they had an ease and creativity that felt like a small band with Wendy as the lead performer. The sisters were a trio, each with their own personalities wearing different-colored bandanas to hold back their long summer hair.

The kitchen was close enough to the house to hear the sounds of Wendy’s two children, Marguerite and Wyatt, and the bark of her two black Labs waiting to be let out. The kitchen was all about food and its preparation. A large commercial stove was the anchor for enormous pots and cast-iron fry pans. Metal shelving held stacks of plastic containers, cookbooks, jars of dried ingredients and other equipment, ready for catering. A walk-in refrigerator was where all the perishable food was kept. A list of recipes and events they were catering were tacked on a bulletin board, and James Taylor songs were playing in the background. The screen door was always in motion with kids, friends and helpers coming by. Wendy’s kitchen was a place to hang out, nibble, and watch sushi being rolled or shrimp being sautéed and always to talk! The kitchen was alive with smells of herbs, freshly-baked rolls and whatever was being cooked that day.

I felt such pleasure sitting on a stool, watching each daughter in action. They were serious, having fun and working hard — slicing locally-grown beets, scrubbing spinach at the sink, or stirring over the hot stove. As I studied them I could see the contrast between my mother and her meager breakfast of a half of grapefruit, protein toast, a boiled egg and a glass of ice water, and my daughters’ sheer joy in what they were creating, their desire to please those who would eat their food and their satisfaction of cooking together as three sisters.

All this came to a sudden stop, five years ago this June. After more than a dozen years of catering, Wendy was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Following surgery, she was no longer able to work. Thirteen months later, on July 17, 2008, she died. The backyard kitchen, once a stimulating and active place, was now silent, but her two sisters have never stopped cooking for family and friends, using many of the recipes created in the kitchen with Wendy. Who knows, the cookbook Three Sisters Cook might still be written.

A Culinary Arts Fund was created in Wendy Weisman Jenkinson’s name through the Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard to help a deserving regional high school student follow his or her passion for cooking. Weisman family members will hand out the scholarship award at Class Night tonight.