Before I moved to France five years ago, I went through my mom's recipe clippings. I needed to write them all down: spaghetti casserole (which I haven't eaten since 1985), butterscotch pudding, pumpkin bread. . . What was I going to do if I needed to make chocolate chip cookies one night? I couldn't just get some random recipe off the internet. I needed hers. The one I grew up with. And her recipe for playdough couldn't hurt either. (You never know when a play date might show up at your Paris apartment.) And today, as I whip up a batch of my mom's Egyptian rice with vermicelli and hear the bits of pasta sizzling at the bottom of the pot and smell the richness of the butter (or margarine) even once I pour cups of water on top, I know why all those recipes were so important to me: because somehow they take me home again. And all the madeleines and linden tea in France can't hold a candle to that.Cher as Loretta Castorini. [Online image] 1987.
