Bermuda, infradito, costume, canottiere…  tutto in valigia. C’è anche chi parte per il Mar Rosso ma per andare a lavorare. Aggiungete una buccia d’arancia al vostro caffè d’orzo e trasformate una broda amara in un’esperienza.

Il primo ministro russo, in visita in italia, ha dormito ad Arcore nella villa di Berlusconi…

e al mattino Silvio gli ha anche portato la colazione a letto.

So Claudia packed her bags and headed off to Paris, leaving the rest of us here feeling sorry for ourselves in gray, damp and freezing old Milano.
So what better time to start off our new column: “reminds me of home” , where we will be digging around in our past, reminding ourselves of all those smells, songs and objects that instantaneously haul us back to distant times and long lost places. The following piece was written by my mother, Pauline.

We all know how smells, sounds and tastes can put us in À la recherche du temps perdu mode – for me, the scent of jasmine, just-cut grass or mosquito coils immediately transport me to another country, close your eyes when you hear just a few bars of certain songs and you’re back in that time and place, and one of the places the taste or just the name of certain foods take us back to is “home”, in all its interpretations.  It’s usually the simple things – when have you ever heard anyone say oysters and champagne or steak tartare or even profiteroles gave them that warm, fuzzy feeling? A quick poll around the table came up with macaroni and cheese, Mom’s meat loaf, something as uncomplicated as a mug of creamy, chocolaty cocoa when you came home from school on a cold wet day, your grandmother’s chicken soup – if you had that kind of a grandmother – or something seemingly exotic unless you grew up where they cost next to nothing, an avocado pear sandwich – mashed avocado, salt and lots of pepper between two slices of brown bread.

Simple, easy to eat, evocative – they don’t call if comfort food for nothing.

Long ago and far away, one of the ultimate comfort foods for a skinny girl and her brothers was something they occasionally had for breakfast. Breakfast on northern winter mornings was usually a big bowl of porridge with a swirl of golden syrup on top, sweet, warm and guaranteed to keep you going all morning. Occasionally though, the sound of eggs being beaten in a bowl would be even more of an incentive to get dressed quickly than the chilly bedrooms where the delicate traceries of frost on the window panes were often inside as well as out (if that sounds Dickensian, winters really were colder then!) Down the stairs to the kitchen where the coal-burning stove that heated the water also made the room an oasis of warmth. Eggs being beaten in a bowl, slices cut from a loaf of white bread, dippy eggs for breakfast!

Who knew then that this simple dish had a much posher name – “French Toast” – crustless triangles of bread dipped into beaten egg, fried in butter until golden, drained on kitchen paper and dusted with sugar and cinnamon.

Our dippy egg was a poorer relation – a couple eggs made to go further with a good slosh of milk, crusts left on the bread (“makes your hair curl”) and no sugar or cinnamon, just a pinch of salt.

Who knows why something so simple of all things should evoke home as warmth and safety, it just does.