COOKING CAPPELLETTI: CHEF BOY AR DEE AND THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

I was in need of some comfort food. I was still dizzy and nauseous with what I hope was just a bout of Menieres (because it will go away if that's what it is) and I was tired from writing 1,500 words on Roger Ailes for the Guardian in three hours with a pounding headache. To paraphrase Pascal, I'd have given them a thousand words, but they didn't give me enough time.

There was not in the icebox as I'm off to the US next week. So I boil some store-bought cappelletti and drain them, a dab of butter and some pepper. Toss in a couple of teaspoons of store-bought red pesto. A splash of Healthy Boy Thai chili sauce, a dash of Louisiana hot sauce, and a few chopped salad tomatoes. Then grate some parmesan cheese over the top. Perfectly comforting.

Then I realise that this looks an awful like the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli that came out of a can, which many of my young friends (or their mothers) took for Italian food. My mother would not allow such stuff in the house. She always made her own spaghetti sauce, and very well too. She may have been Jewish, but she grew up in a neighbourhood with lots of Italians. Like them, she always made spaghetti or ziti (same sauce) on Wednesdays and we always ate fish on Fridays. She even pronounced minestrone to rhyme with 'bone', like those Neopolitans in West Haven did.

I am starting to realise that life is indeed a circle.