I was born in Connecticut and spent my early childhood in a typical, east-coast, Jewish family where bagels were eaten pretty much all day long. Breakfast with butter, lunch with a tomato as a sandwich, and as a snack in between. I was surprised when I found out that other families didn’t totally sustain themselves on bagels like we did, and I was shocked when we later moved to Colorado and I met people who had never even had one before (my Puerto Rican wife included).

My taste and appreciation of food have expanded well beyond the bagel over the years, but you know, some habits die hard. The Jewish ghetto here in Rome is all Sephardic Jews who find the idea of a bagel just as foreign as my family would have found a fried artichoke. So although we are rich in almost all other foodstuff here in Italy, when it comes to bagels, we are poor as paupers.

We once found a company that shipped fresh bagels all over the world. Excited, we went to order, and found that Italy was one of a handful of countries that they wouldn’t ship to (due to Italy’s infamous incapacity for all things timely). So had we decided on a Beehive Rangoon or Mali, we would be in bagel heaven, but in Italy, no, there’s only been two solutions: go to the US or make them ourselves.

I guess I was intimidated for a long time about making them. Seemed like a long process and those who I’d known with some experience hadn’t had much luck. But I found a simple recipe some months ago, and the results were great. A few tries later I’ve become more efficient at it. Strangely, in the cafe, guests aren’t that enthusiastic about it. I guess they haven’t been away long enough to really miss them. But all my expatriate friends would pay any sum asked for a dozen bagels. For any of you out there living in Rome who also yearn for a fresh bagel, tomorrow there will be a fresh batch with Philadelphia cream cheese.