The time has come for me to confess to a relationship I've enjoyed since I was a little girl. A spicy, delicious and sweet love affair that I have often shamelessly fantasised about.  

It's baking day and as I open the oven door, the heady aroma of freshly baked bread brings me to reflect on the summer of '94 spent with my family at Budaörs on the outskirts of Budapest.  

It would be little wonder if Hungarian goulash had complained of an identity crisis over the years. Recognised internationally as a stew (and frequently bastardised in various ways), the famous icon of Hungary is a thick and wholesome soup named after the nomadic Magyar herdsmen or gulyás of the Great Plain.

'Come and eat some gomboc,' my mother would say to me in Hungarian when I was a child. 'Köszönöm, nem kérem,' I would reply, shaking my head vigorously. In my mind I had somehow confused the word gomboc, or dumpling, with the word gomba, which means mushroom in Magyar. And the thought of a mushroom encased in dough and dusted with fried breadcrumbs simply didn't appeal to my very young taste buds.

'Gyere kislányom, a hideg meggyleves nagyon finom! (come my little girl, this cold cherry soup is really delicious!),' my mother, Irén, would say as she beckoned me to taste her freshly made, ice-cold soup. Clearly she loved it, and indeed it must have been very good. For with each spoonful she would close her eyes, form a smile, raise her shoulders towards her neck (as you do when something is immensely pleasurable), and make the 'Mmmm' sound. Actually I can still see the look of bliss on her face... it was as though this lovely lady, who had lived a much harder life than most of us could imagine, had just died and gone to heaven.

Bizzy Lizzy's Good Things turned three in August and to mark the occasion I ate cake for breakfast this morning, and I think I might just eat some more for lunch and dinner. My friend, Pierre Issa, a.k.a. Pepe Saya, has partnered with me in the celebration and, thanks to his generosity, I have a delicious competition and prize giveaway for my readers.

Growing up in a migrant family in Australian suburbia in the 1960s had its challenges.  We were 'different' you see.  For starters, we were relatively poor...  my parents had survived the war in Europe and fled Hungary after the Russian uprising in 1956, arriving in Australia with a couple of suitcases and three children.  We spoke Hungarian at home and, when speaking in English, my parents had quite marked (but rather delightful) accents.  Although a baker made his morning rounds delivering sliced white bread to people's doorsteps, we ate crusty 'Continental' bread which we dipped into a kind of milky Café au lait that mum cooked on the stove every morning.  

'Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.'
                                                                                                                       - Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1890-1995