When Shirley Wells moved into Park Plaza, a senior living facility in Orange, she felt right away a couple of things missing from her apartment.

No stove. No oven.

For a woman who built a career cooking, who derives joy not just from cooking, but from creating, who thrives on getting “adventurous with food,” who has prepared feasts for hundreds of guests at a time, living without a kitchen was out of the question.

So, when Wells, 86, was informed by the Park Plaza staff she was welcome to cook and bake in the activity room’s kitchen, her spirits were lifted.

“This is where I love to be,” said Wells, in the kitchen at Park Plaza where she has now lived for two-plus years. “I feel back home again. I’m able to cook. I’m able to create.”

Seeing how much time Wells spent cooking in the activity room, she was asked by the staff to teach a cooking class for her fellow residents.

They didn’t have to ask twice.

Once a month, Wells now shares her recipes, step-by-step in front of a class of about 20 residents.

With 1,800 cataloged recipes, Wells doesn’t expect to ever teach the same recipe twice.

Wells, who owned a catering business for 35 years, is also working with staff to compile a cookbook of her favorite recipes.

“I love it,” said Jean Munson, 88, who has taken Wells’ cooking class four times. “The way she demonstrates and tells us what to do and gives us the recipes and then she feeds us. Whatever she makes, she has extras. It’s delicious.”

Resident Carol Wood, who has been friends with Wells for 60 years, is also a regular in the class.

Wood and Wells had lost touch with each other before reconnecting after moving into Park Plaza at about the same time.

“Her recipes are marvelous,” Wood said. “She makes all kinds of stuff. Cooking, baking.”

The secret to making a meal great is preparing the food “the way you like,” Wells said.

“Add things to make it taste the way you want it to taste,” she said. “I like to take food and see what else I can do with it. I like to be able to get a little more flavor and get a little different angle on things. I don’t understand people who just open a can and eat it. I never did that, even as a kid.”

Wells, who has three children, six grandchildren and eight great grandchildren with one more on the way, was a young girl when her family moved to Orange County from Missouri.

She was in the fourth grade when her grandfather, an excellent cook, taught her some cooking basics. And, she recalls learning about spices and seasoning from a cookbook she was given by a neighbor.

Her repertoire of recipes kept expanding and before long, Wells said she was cooking for her family after school.

“I was cooking more than I made time for anything else,” she said.

One of Wells’ first experiences preparing a meal for a large group was a lavish birthday party for her mother.

“I made fried chicken,” Wells recalls. “My mother said, ‘Who cooked this chicken?’ I said, ‘I cooked this chicken.’ She said, ‘I can’t believe it. You’ve got the right touch.’”

Wells married in 1953, right out of high school and was soon cooking for her own children and then teaching them to cook.

“I started teaching them to cook very early because I thought if something ever happened to me, they would need to have some survival skills,” Wells said.

Wells’ son, Kirk, remembers his mother buying a variety of fresh seafood in Newport Beach and then spending hours making a pot of delicious Cioppino, a fisherman’s stew.

“She was just always cooking, always baking,” Kirk Wells said. “We’d have these blowout Christmas parties where 100 people would show up and she would cook everything.”

Wells’ catering business got started by accident.

She was working as a wedding planner at her church when a caterer canceled at the last minute. She jumped in to keep the couple’s special day on track.

“It turned out to be 200 people,” Wells said. “We had it in our church hall. I decorated the church, moved all the furniture in the church. I cooked all the food and I cleaned it up. I learned a lesson in a hurry: Get help.”

After the wedding, Wells started getting catering requests from some of the guests.

“And then it grew from there, and grew from there, and grew from there,” Wells said. “I never advertised. It was word of mouth. I never really planned to do this. I just took it in stride and just moved forward.”

One of the best parts of preparing meals for large gatherings was getting to know the clients and their guests, she said.

On teaching the cooking class at Park Plaza, Wells said, “It’s been a real pleasure to be able to do this. I feel honored to be asked to do this.”

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