Eating for Dumfries and Galloway

I have been trying this crazy experiment for a week, attempting to eat only food grown or produced in Dumfries and Galloway, the region where I live. It might have been easy for those who like meat and two veg for their evening meal every day. For a Scottish-Italian who loves his pasta it has been a bit of a nightmare.

The nice thing, however, has been going into little shops and farmers markets. Places where the conversation amounts to something more than "Would you like help with your packing?" followed by 59 beeps from a cash-register and then "Would you like cashback?".

The food DOES, by and large, taste better. Once you get over your fear of a big slab of meat or a fish tail or some such that doesn't come pre-packed in clingfilm it is actually quite nice. You feel a bit like a hunter-gatherer of old.

Still, be glad to get back to the pasta...

If I knew you were coming, I would bake a cake

I've never really thought much of baking. It seemed too much like science and not enough fun. Cooking, I love. But baking? No thank you.

However, thanks to a suggestion on this blog my inventive juices started to flow. Maybe there is a place for baking in my repertoire after all. Imagine my interest at stumbling across this recipe for, yes you read it right, strawberry, grappa and mascarpone fairy cakes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2112324,00.html

Now, my old Nonno is probably pulling his baffi out from beyond the grave at the very thought. Bad enough to put fruit near grappa (A woman's drink, he might have said). But to add in mascarpone? And to call it a fairy cake?

You know what though, I might try to bake some. If I do, be sure you will see the results of my labour here. Remember not to feed them to the kids.

Aglio, olio and ....

So, tell me something I didn't know. It turns out that the latest BBC series on food is claiming that garlic is Mother Nature's answer to viagra. The Truth About Food has been running trailers making the claims about the stalwart of Italian cooking pepping up matters in the bedroom.

What is so intriguing about this is that it would answer an ancient conundrum. I regularly go out on a Thursday night and fill myself up with red wine, grappa and garlic-filled food. By the time I get home I always feel, to put it frankly, pretty much irresistible. I had always put this down to the alcohol but clearly the Italian food is playing its part too.

However, with every answer comes another question. What is Mother Nature playing at? Clearly a cocktail of Montepulciano, Grappa San Martino and garlic is her idea of the perfect aphrodisiac. But why has she made the smell of these favourite ingredients so repulsive that the chances of getting within 50 miles of a woman are minimal? The only solution, perhaps, is to ensure your would-be partner has consumed alcohol and aglio in similar proportions...

http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=32684&in_page_id=7&in_a_source=