For me, food and memories are intertwined – hot, crispy potato cakes from the fish and chip shop next door to my Nana’s florist shop, eaten surrounded by bunches of gypsophila and fragrant carnations; the metallic tang of tinned asparagus spears, rolled into flattened white bread spread with mayonnaise as hors d’oeuvres for my parents dinner parties (it was the seventies – I make them with fresh asparagus now); sitting on squares of newspaper to eat dripping red icy poles; mastering an omelette and living on them in my early twenties…

Luisa Weiss’s memoir, My Berlin Kitchen, describes her food memories, beginning when she was a child, as she was shuttled between her Italian mother, who lived in Berlin and her American father, who lived in Boston. Weiss was born in Germany, and when her parents separated , it was decided that she would spend the school year in Boston and the holidays in Berlin. While this system worked well enough for many years, Weiss was homesick for Berlin. In her twenties, she had a stint in Paris, and then landed a a dream job with a publisher in New York. But still Berlin beckoned. Continue reading →