Seasoned With Cigarette Ash

and gritty to taste

Fried bread reminds me of my granny. White bread in a hot pan, fried in bacon grease or dripping or a combination of the two; her fridge was never without a small bowl of Frytex into which she’d add the hot fat from whatever food she was frying that day.

For breakfast each morning, she’d have two sausages, either with fried or batch bread. The sausages themselves would be seasoned with cigarette ash, a lit cigarette dangling between her lips as she flipped and fried to a Radio One soundtrack.

Lyons tea reminds me of Granny, too. In a kitchen cupboard, there were always at least 20 boxes of tea, stacked high. In the days of collecting minstrel tokens (honestly, WHAT were they thinking?!) and sending away for promotional items, she could have had them all. The tea stockpiling was, my mother told me, a habit she’d adopted after the Second World War, during a time when tea was impossible to get. She was determined not to be caught short, should another war break out.

I think it was about more than the tea itself, though; in the 1940s, Granny had a baby girl, Rosemary, who was sick. No one knew what was wrong with her, really, or what to do about it – just that she couldn’t eat without vomiting. The only food she could keep down? Bananas, also impossible to source in Dublin in the 1940s.

Rosemary died at the age of two, following a long hospital stay.

After that, my Granny started to stockpile the tea. Control what you can, I imagine her thinking.

I have a collection of my own, now, in a way also driven by a shortage of Irish breakfast tea. This time it’s because of geography, not war. I drink Barry’s, not because I prefer it to Lyons, but because it’s easier to find here, but I’m never without a number of boxes at the top of my pantry.

I think of Granny, when I take out a new one, and of her daughter, my namesake who, as it transpired, had celiac disease, something about which the medical establishment knew little, back then.

Bolognese reminds me of my mum. “The inevitable bolognese,” she’ll respond, when asked what she’s having for dinner – there’s always a Tupperware of sauce in the freezer, or the fridge, ready to be eaten for dinner with a bowl of pasta or, if the mood strikes you (or you have some leftover), rice.

She makes hers with very little fanfare; all of the ingredients (minced beef, onions, garlic, a tin or two of tomatoes, tomato puree, mixed herbs, severa bay leaves and vegetables – carrots, if you have them, mushrooms, too, sometimes some celery and an occasional pepper, should there be one knocking around the fridge) are thrown in a large pot and it’s brought to the boil, then simmered, with a lid on, for as long as possible.

At bedtime, the hob is switched off and the bolognese left out overnight – food safety be damned – to cool before being divided for the freezer, with an amount conserved for the fridge, or turned into lasagna, layered with pasta and home-made cheese sauce.

Before I moved to America, though I knew of the existence of jars of cheese sauce, it had never really occurred to me to use one. Even now, I don’t like the taste: they’re too creamy, too cloying, they leave a sandy texture on the tongue.

Mum’s cheese sauce starts by making a roux, then adding milk, slowly, stirring the sauce until it comes to a boil, then reducing to a simmer for it to thicken. Heaping handfuls of grated cheddar cheese are added until the required flavour is achieved, then it’s seasoned – salt and pepper instead of ash – before being added to the lasagna in layers, or combined with cooked pasta, topped with breadcrumbs and more grated cheese and baked in the oven until lightly browned on top, a delicious, rich macaroni cheese my children refuse to eat.

The bolognese is better the day after; if I’m organised enough, I try to make it the day before I intend to eat it, but that’s a big “if”. Another one: if I have red wine, a slosh of that goes in there too. There are no quantities, everything gets measured out by feel. Do I feel like more or less tomato? More or less wine? More or less herbs? (More or fewer, I think would be more accurate.)

No two bologneses are the same.

Green peas remind me of my sister, specifically in a pasta dish, with pancetta or bacon and, I discovered after the fact, chopped-up anchovies, which add a rich umami flavour that can’t really be faked.

(Frozen green peas are a memory of my mother, adding them to a dinner that, otherwise, was too much of the same colour: a Sunday roast with potatoes and parsnips, pork chops with mash, chicken tenders with chips.)

During the summer Beatrice and I spent together in Milan, sharing a double futon in the bedroom that doubled as a living room – meaning the bed was folded up and made each and every morning, a habit I’ve often thought I should carry on into my everyday life, but never have – we ate that pasta dish a lot, although she swore blind to me she didn’t add the anchovies, as she knew I didn’t like them.

It turns out that what you don’t know will neither kill nor affect you in any way, at east when it comes to tinned fish. Years later, she would laugh uproariously: “You didn’t even notice the anchovies!” She’s right, I didn’t.

Hers is not even the only food-related deception I’ve had to suffer through in this life. As a child, I decided I didn’t like stew, so Mum told me she was making casserole, instead. Of course, the recipes are the same, but the exoticism of the name won me over.

Even now, at the age of 40, I would rather we call it casserole, not stew, even though the truth of that makes me feel vaguely unpatriotic. And I’d rather not know about the anchovies.

Beatrice moved away this week. Four hundred and thirty-six miles away, to be precise, to Knoxville, Tennessee, where the company she’s worked for since last December is located.

We’ve known it was coming for a while; she took the job with the proviso that she would relocate at the end of the school year. For the past few months, she has spent one week out of the month in Knoxville and another five days or so in Florida or Georgia or New York, for a customer event or a trade show or a marketing conference. It’s been hectic, and stressful, and chaotic – when you have four chidren, a dog and two cats, no travel is ever straightforward – so I imagine the move, being there, at last, rather than here, must be something of a relief.

Still, neither that, nor the knowledge that this move has been coming, drawing ever closer week by week, has made the reality of it easier to brook.

I spent the first few days of this week over and back to her house in Fort Wayne, helping sift through the detritus of a decade spent in one place. We hefted bin bags of clothes and toys out into my car, to consign (and then to donate whatever was rejected from the consignment store).

I went home with a slushie maker and a bunch of flowers and a litter picker (my dreams of becoming David Sedaris draw ever closer) and several plant pots, one of which would immediately roll out of the boot of my car and smash into smithereens on the driveway. I cried hot tears as I picked up huge pieces of turquoise glazed ceramic and put them into the wheelbarrow, a problem for another day (and no, I don’t have it in me to kintsugi them, but it’s a good suggestion).

A team of movers arrived on Tuesday and began to methodically wrap and pack things into boxes. Reams of packing paper stacked up high on the kitchen counter, a sheet for each mug, glass, vase, plate and bowl.

We scuttled around among them, being pushed further and further down into one corner, as chairs and stools and cups were packed and stacked away.

On Tuesday night, I brought over five mugs and a bottle opener (the essentials) and we ordered pizza, with extra for the movers. Our 10-year-old ordered pasta and was delighted that, for once, he got to eat it with his fingers, buttery noodles that had to be held with just the right amount of pressure, so as not to slip from his grasp.

On Wednesday morning I picked up my Dad – my parents are here, to “help” with the move (inverted commas Beatrice’s) – and we went to Jimmy John’s to pick up sandwiches. While we were there, we got a text from Beatrice asking us to pick up medication for the cat while we were out. Everything was done last minute, but everything was done.

By Wednesday evening, they were on the road. I’d come back to my house to feed and water the dog, and to pick the boys up from their babysitter. “We’ll probably be over to you with some more stuff for your house,” Beatrice told me as I left. “And I still have to see your garden!”

“Don’t worry about it if you don’t,” I said. But what I meant was, do worry about it. Worry about me. Come and say goodbye.

They didn’t. I called, two hours later, to see how things were going, and they were on the road already – Beatrice, my parents, one of her four boys (the others are going with their Dad) and their two cats, yowling plaintively from the back – 90 minutes into a seven-and-a-half-hour drive.

I wished, for a minute, that I was with them, for the drive and for the unpacking on the other end. I didn’t enjoy the dismantling of the Fort Wayne home but I imagine I’d like the other side – the allocating and the organising and the making a home of a house, using all of the things (so many things) that make up a life.

I have a life here, one that’ll go on without my sister and her family living right up the road, although it’s worth mentioning that I’m visiting next week, making the drive with Brandin and three of our children (and no cats, thankfully) to spend the July 4th weekend in Knoxville, sleeping God knows where in a house that already has two extra adults in it.

Brandin will fly back on the Monday evening – he has a limited number of days off each year, 15, to be precise, which include sick days, whether or not he has a note from his doctor, or has had an operation, or any number of possibilities – and the rest of us will stay another week, then drive the seven-and-a-half hours back, this time with my parents in tow.

They’ll stay with us for almost three weeks before they head home to Ireland, at which point, I suppose, I’ll have to truly grapple with my new reality. Without my sister down the road, who will I drop into when I want to have a cry and can’t face doing it in front of the children? Who will I call on when I need someone to hold my baby for me while I drink ice cold water and take deep breaths? Who will go with me to Marshall’s for no reason whatsoever, or drive 45 minutes to pick up something ridiculous I found on Facebook Marketplace?

Things will, most likely, be fine. I’ll figure it out. Before I moved here, five years ago, Beatrice and I hadn’t lived in the same country in more than 15 years. We didn’t even talk every day, something that seems implausible now. At least we’ll still be in the same time zone, on the same land mass, just a drive – granted, a long one – away from one another.

And, I suppose, now that I’m working on a farm a few hours a week, I’ll always be able to get my hands on some green peas.

To add insult to the injury of being left behind, abandoned, you could say, the consignment store I brought five bags of clothes to – nice clothes, cute clothes, clothes we decided we were done with but which had nothing ostensibly wrong with them other than our own ennui – accepted six items, and gave me $22.50 for my troubles. I was sorry I’d bothered.

I’m almost finished Talia Hibbert’s Midnight Heat collection (in times of emotional turmoil, I turn to straightforward romantic fiction with high levels of spice and a happily ever after and I will not be ashamed) and I’m very much enjoying them. Curvy protagonists of colour (bonus points because the word “curvy” doesn’t feature) with men who are truly sexy and likable (a rare combo), they’ve made for very enjoyable reading.