Friday, July 12, 2013

Scottish gourmands - who would have guessed?

The Scottish government is urging the nation’s food producers to step up efforts to win EU protected food name status.

I just love it...being the granddaughter of robust Scottish women on both sides of my family. Good old Scots apparently have “one of the world’s finest natural larders” and the produce that comes from that larder is now recognised as unique and the associated trade names are to be protected.

Whoever would have thought? I always think of the Scots in the same breath as oatmeal and fish ... But here’s an insight to a whole different world of food and Stornoway Black Pudding, Arbroath Smokies, Scottish Wild Salmon, Scotch Lamb, Ayrshire Dunlop Cheese and Orkney Island Cheddar a few of the delicacies that you might like to look for in your gourmet foodie shop.  


Not sure where that leaves my Scottish heritage and its culinary legacy. My great grandparents came to Australia to escape the damp and smog of Glasgow which was proposed as the cause of their younger daughter’s chronic asthma. But it wasn’t the changed climate or that bracing traditional Scots diet that set my grannie on the path to health and easy-breathing. It was removal of everything white and processed and embrace of whole, fresh and raw. I have that switch from refined and her lifelong interest in whole foods to thank for my own good health and professional passion ... and maybe just a little bit of genetics :) 


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