O Canarino

All right how does this sound for a morning ritual?

The girl woke startled — shook off her blinding eye-mask and made her bleary way to her old-school alarm clock all the way across the room, flipped on a switch for hot water, felt for a black tea bag, then diluted some of the boiling water with cold water squirted some lemon juice and made her way back to sit in a ponderous silence.

Pretty dire right? How about this?

The lady woke and languorously went over to soothe her pet rooster and then put on the kettle for her favourite cup of morning tea but first sipped on a brisk canarino before easing into her morning meditation.

The big difference of course is Canarino — that charming Italian name for hot water with lemon juice and often an appealingly arranged lemon peel. I did not know of this concoction until I got charged 3 quid for ordering one at Aubaine while fending off a cold. I blithely sent back the cheque saying I ordered nothing of the sort. While I did get was a testy lecture from the waiter that hot water with lemon was in fact a canarino. In life’s little irritations lie valuable lessons.

Hot water with lemon juice — how banal — but a canarino — that’s cool! that sets the tone for my mornings — it just makes them languid and vacationy as if I were at a farm with all the time in world to watch the persimmon dawn flame into a pale blue sky.

The idea of drinking this first thing came through my chewy encounter with the Viva Mayr diet. Now this didn’t last because I got really bored chewing and chewing all my food though I do chew a lot more for having tried this but this hot water with lemon first thing I was totally on board.

Apart from the benefits of jumpstarting your metabolism and stabilizing pH and being good for the skin which I can’t be sure of since it’s just one half of one little lemon to me it’s an indulgence — it just eases me into the day with no morning breath.

Market for Lemons by the way is the seminal paper by George Akerlof on information asymmetry and signaling is one of my favourite ideas in Economics — I apply it liberally and everywhere but here’s a recent fun fact — this 2001 Nobel winner — Akerlof is married to the Fed chair— the intrepid Janet Yellen.