Baked Beans

Whenever I went to Eileen's for tea, we would have baked beans on toast and a glass of milk. Her Mum would lay the table for the two of us and then serve us like a waitress. She was  very extrovert and  cheerful,  born within the sound of Bow Bells, a true cockney.

Eileen's house was a pre-fab built for the Londoners who had lost their homes in the blitz. She had Beatles wallpaper in her bedroom and I really liked going there.

When I first came to Italy, I really missed British food, like Marmite, baked beans, lemon meringue pie filling. I 'd fill my suitcase with such products. Friends would ask me to bring them HP Sauce and salad cream. I only brought back HP Sauce once, because it exploded in my case. Not a great home-coming.

After awhile though, those packets and jars would just sit in the cupboard and go past their sell-by-date, because we mainly ate Italian dishes. The one exception was Lemon meringue pie. It is always a huge success in Italy, a very popular dessert among my family. I can make the filling from scratch now, without the packet.

Baked beans have a more limited fan club. Mainly my sons. One of them, even gave tins of baked beans as Christmas presents. They looked very festive. They haven't been made famous by Andy Warhol, like the Tomato soup cans, but they do brighten up the store cupboard. As a quick meal, they take some beating and whenever I see them in a supermarket I will buy a few cans.


In recent years, quite a few ethnic shops have opened up in Italy. The one near home, that I occasionally go to, is run by people from Ghana. There, among the plantains and twisted roots, hair products for Afro styles, small green bananas, what should I discover, but Baked beans, salad cream, carnation milk, Ribena and PG tips.

How incongruous it seemed. How wonderful to find them. When I asked the shop assistant, she explained that all those products are sold in their country, some are actually made there. These supermarket products from Britain, made them feel more at home too, just like me.