Nostalgia

I've been thinking a lot about my country lately. I miss the food, the wine, the good conversation, the noise, but mostely my family.
In days like these I find myself just standing in my kitchen with a glass of table wine trying to emulate some typical recipe. I have some spices I carry with me when coming back to the States after visiting my family, and I even handled to bring some hand made clay pots.
My mom says that she can hardly believe I'm the same person I was when living under her roof. She had all these rules that I hated and some I found quite useless but now I have my own kitchen they make perfect sense. Mostly it was all about cleaning.
- Never cook before washing all the dishes.
- Always use hot water to wash the dishes and just enough soap, otherwise is a waste of both things.
- Make sure to wash all the utensils and tools as you use them. That way things don't pile up and make a big mess around the cooking area.
- Pull you hair back in a pony tail or something that assures you and everybody else it won't be appearing in the soup.
- Never cry on top of the pots and pans.
And the GOLDEN RULE: NEVER EVER cook while sitting down. Otherwise you are a lazy woman and God knows that there is no worse curse than being called that.
My mom and the rest of my family have a very strong opinion of lazy women. She would die if she sees what I've seen here sometimes: women at the store wearing pijamas. I honestly don't know if it is a trend or what, but I've surprised myself disgusted at the sight of such a sacrilege. It's like if my mom was taking over my body and soul to say "Lazy woman, that is disgusting! You must be smelling terribly, not even taking a shower today, what a shame. There is nothing I hate more than seeing women doing the houseshores in Pijamas, I have the impression they must be stinky!!". I hear my mom's voice loud and clear in my head in absolute disapproval with her always dignified look.

As I review all the rules my mom enforces in the kitchen I make sure the stove plates are as impecable as it can be and that the pots and pans get washed, dryed and stored as they are meant to be. In a few more minutes I will take them out again to cook with them, but it doesn't matter, because at the end all the rules make perfect sense to me, above all when I'm missing my mother so badly.