It's rain-snowing outside, and to keep the melancholy at bay I've got a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Instead of melancholy, nostalgia comes rushing into my heart as the house fills with the smell of garlic, tomatoes, roasty olive oil and black pepper. I've been eating this same spaghetti since before I can remember - the picture from my first birthday party show me wearing it on my face. We ate spaghetti once a week growing up, if at all possible, then on a Thursday, we eat it for Christmas Eve, and now every time I go home to visit, my mom makes spaghetti to welcome me.

It's one of those organic family recipies - I couldn't tell you how to make it if I tried, because I don't measure anything - I just add this and that until "it looks right." Which is how my mom makes it. Which is how her mom made it. Which is probably also how her mother-in-law made it. It cooks on the stove all day, simmering, simmering and covering the countertops in about sixty gazillion little crimson splatters which will piss me off tomorrow, but today don't bother me a bit because they're a part of the game, and the spaghetti wouldn't taste right if I covered it with a screen while it cooked.

What do you cook when you miss home?