Food parcels from Italy ....... and other places ..... with home thoughts from abroad

Now the box was not strictly speaking a food parcel, more an Italian selection box, and as such should really be described as a hamper.

It was delivered by our old friend Bob Amato last night .

The title on the box translates as Feast of the Holidays and will have been made for the Christmas market.

And that got me thinking about food and food parcels.

Over the years we have had more than our fair share, usually from Italy and containing selections of food which far outstrip anything you can buy here.

And along with theses, our Chris in Canada lightened up a miserable February back in 2015 with a package of “stuff” from Ontario.

And what I like about all these family parcels sent from around the world is that what has been chosen is usually the everyday mix of staple foods, which in turn offers up a fine snap shot of what our relatives eat.

I am too young to remember just what our Canadian family sent over just after the last war when rationing and food shortages resulted in a healthy but meagre diet.

But I do remember one of my uncles bringing back South African butter on his return from a retirement trip which had taken him overland from Cairo to Cape Town in 1960 and a little earlier eating Polish biscuits from the couple who lived upstairs from us.

Even now just the thought of those products takes me right back, as does the first time I encountered that basic sauce made from yogurt, coriander and mint which I was offered in the home of a friend in Ashton-Under-Lyne in the 1970s.

Each of them was in their own way a revelation of the world beyond south east London and later Manchester, and I suppose to today would all be taken for granted.

But not by me, so that just leaves me to say, bring on the food parcels.

Location; pretty much everywhere

Pictures; food parcels, 2013-2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson