Crepes, Coffee, and Rod Stewart

Today is the opposite of yesterday: rainy and grey and quiet. The birds did not wake up the cats and my little dog stayed in bed after I got up.

The perfect day to have a good cup of coffee and play some music. I have an aunt that I spent a lot of time with when I was young and when she got up every day the summer I spent with her, she would make a pot of coffee and put on Rod Stewart's album, Crossing the Atlantic. She's French, so it was very ritualistic. I had coffee with her from about age 12. She taught me to make crepes and flip them. We would make a huge pile of them and have them with sour cream and sugar. The two of us and my two little toddler cousins would eat the whole pile. The trick with the crepe batter was to add some beer, and I have always added beer to my crepe batter. And flip them when they start to look like a giraffe. I loved the way she said giraffe and whenever I make them I can hear her voice when it is time to flip them. She is probably the most charming human being I have ever known in my life.

We walked all over Santa Monica that summer with my two little cousins in strollers. One time she took me to the Tudor House and we got a package of McVities chocolate digestive biscuits. We ate the whole pack before we got to the apartment which was not that far. She said they reminded her of London. They were the best cookies(biscuits) I had ever eaten - and to this day have ever eaten. I have always kept them in my cupboard as often as possible, although, between my son and me they never last long.

It is amazing how some memories can define certain parts of us. That summer when I was 12 and living with my grandmother - when my grandmother went to work she would drop me off at my aunt and uncles apartment on 5th street in Santa Monica. Of course, everything changed after that summer, I grew up and wanted to be with my friends. I started ice skating and most of my teenage years were spent on the ice after that. The summer I spent with her defined my taste in food, a way that I would eat for the rest of my life - camembert, curries, big plates of fried potatoes, yogurt. She also helped define a personal style, a way of wearing clothes that was feeling them and owning them. A new pair of shoes was not your own until they were scuffed and you wore them and walked in them; the scuffs and the bends were yours and they molded to your body.

Some crepes sound good right  now. And three kisses...xxx