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Gragano

My visit to the spaghetti factory in Italy’s most famous pasta town, Gragnano

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

msmarmitelover

Scottish food and drink: Scotland is famous for i

Scottish food and drink:
Scotland is famous for its porridge and whisky.

I ate at several restaurants in Glasgow:
Mussels and cranachan at @mharsanta mharsanta

Cocktails and a raspberry soufflé at The Gannet, a Michelin star restaurant

For high tea, I went to @mackintoshatthewillow tea rooms. Love the @burleighpottery china- with a specially designed willow pattern. Sauchiehall street is Gaelic for willow, hence the willow motif that Charles Rennie Mackintosh threads throughout the design of the tea room. Every table has a bell to order sandwiches, scones, tiny cakes, washed down with their special house blend of tea.

I ate a traditional Scottish breakfast of porridge at @cameronhouselochlomond near Loch Lomond. Their breakfast bar had a Bloody Mary Station!

At the Great Scot bar, some bottles of whisky cost 3.5k, a wee dram can cost £650. A whisky locker costs £300 a year. Some of these lockers commemorate whisky drinking relatives. I saw a brass plaque saying ‘To daddy’. 🥲

The grill at Cameron House served grilled royal turbot with a salsa verde sauce and lobster. Their La Vista restaurant served fantastic modern Italian.

Slange var - which is how you pronounce slàinte mhath- cheers!

My article for @matadornetwork on screen tourism i

My article for @matadornetwork on screen tourism in Scotland. I spent a week touring Scottish castles, villages and ports used for Outlander. If you are a fan too, go check these out: https://matadornetwork.com/read/outlander-filming-locations-in-scotland/. Locations: Glennap castle; Troon; Dean castle; Culross village; ( where Geilis Duncan the witch lived ); Blackness castle(Jamie’s prison); Midhope castle (lallybroch); Falkland ( Inverness in the series); Doune castle (castle Leoch)

My mum turned 86 this weekend. Still beautiful and

My mum turned 86 this weekend. Still beautiful and stylish. Strawberry dress by @boden_clothing

I’m on an Outlander tour in Scotland- revisiting

I’m on an Outlander tour in Scotland- revisiting filming locations. I’m a huge fan of the series and books. I visited ‘castle Leoch’, ‘lallybrock’ where Jamie’s family lived , the village where Frank saw Jamie’s ghost, came across Outlander extra @andythehighlander in the 15th century village where Geilis The witch lived, also castle Dean which was made to look like Lord Lovatt’s castle. Plenty of men in kilts! @visitscotland @lovegreatbritain @matadornetwork

My kitchen dining room with a garland of hops from

My kitchen dining room with a garland of hops from @hukins_hops that I bought for the wedding- now drying fragrantly over my window. I’ve finally cleared up after the wedding. Washed and put away all the cake plates, cake forks, glasses, washed and ironed all the napkins and tablecloths ( not to sound like a trad wife but I’m in love with my @lakelanduk steam generator iron). The wedding flowers by @afterachillea have been decanted and dead flowers removed, water refreshed. I’ll be posting more wedding stuff but have been undergoing post event exhaustion what with the cooking and babysitting and building work. Phew! #londonkitchen #freshhops #postwedding

I made Mac and cheese for 100 people for my daught

I made Mac and cheese for 100 people for my daughter’s wedding. Warning: this video may cause uncontrollable lust for cheesy pasta. #macaronicheese #ASMR #macandcheese

I went to @fourlondon yesterday for my MOB wedding

I went to @fourlondon yesterday for my MOB wedding hair. Expertly advised by Jenny on colour and @tomtsang for cut and blow dry, I came out looking transformed. I was so shocked by my new very adult sophisticated look I was speechless. @four are hairdressers to the stars ( whisper it @nigellalawson went recently) and the salon was full of women getting a glow up. This was an important occasion for me as it’s my daughter @siennamarla ‘s wedding tomorrow to my wonderful soon to be son in law @jamescalmus and as a single parent I’m both mother and father of the bride. I’m walking her down the aisle and doing a speech. 🎤 I’m quite nervous which is weird as I’ve done lots of public speaking. I’m scared I’ll start crying mid-speech. It’s been a long hard journey as all parents know- especially single parents, widows and divorcees.. I guess I must have done a few things right because I’m very proud of her. My 22 month old granddaughter Ophelia will be the flower girl. I’ve never been married so I’m a newbie to all things wedding. I’ve been writing about it on my Substack which as well as food and travel has become a repository for personal confessional truths about my life. Thanks to @fourlondon and @shirley_dmm for my ‘10 years younger experience’. Hair is important. Hilary Clinton says so. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle,” she quipped in 1995. I won’t be making headlines but I’ll feel more confident on one of the biggest days of my little one parent family’s life. #wedding #mob #hair #four #london #confidence #unfiltered

My latest long read in @scotnational on the future

My latest long read in @scotnational on the future of farming. I travelled to Puglia in Italy, phyto valley in Switzerland, found out about food and technology in Israel and visited organic carrot farmers in Scotland. I love writing for The National as they treat my work with so much respect and always make it look great- words and photos. The future of farming means robots, new crops and superfoods, soil-free farming, combatting diseases in animals ( did you know even wild animals get diabetes?) alternative energy and farming by app. It’s all very space age. #farming #scotland #futuretech

Decorated focaccia recipe to represent Virgo for H

Decorated focaccia recipe to represent Virgo for Holiday Goddess site. I do a monthly column featuring astrological recipes and foods. Any publishers interested in this for a book? Virgo rules wheat and the harvest as befits a sign straddling September. Virgoans are bakers and gardeners: they are an earth sign and good with their hands. Their affinity with wheat and their meticulous attitude lends itself to baking. #virgo #astrologyandfood #baker #wheatsheaf #harvest ing

Tomato salad from my garden with basil dressing.

Tomato salad from my garden with basil dressing.

Instagram post 18021833222388678

Instagram post 18021833222388678

Ophelia and I. She’s wearing vintage from Switze

Ophelia and I. She’s wearing vintage from Switzerland / I’m wearing @cabbages_and_roses sample sale top and skirt #Stripes

Med veg tian which is basically a deconstructed ra

Med veg tian which is basically a deconstructed ratatouille. I put a bed of tomato sauce down so it didn’t get too dry, then layers of aubergine courgette tomato and red onions, tightly wedged in hassleback style . Then olive oil, some sliced caper berries. Bake covered in the oven, then uncover and bake again for 20 minutes. Finish off with grated Parmesan. Aubergines are so expensive nowadays though! #summerfood #tian #mediterraneandiet

A tarte tatin, almost glowing with sticky toffee a

A tarte tatin, almost glowing with sticky toffee appley goodness. An amber halo 😇 the trick with tarte tatin is to let it almost burn, to let the apples cook long and slow, with thickly smeared butter and sugar, with star anise tucked in between the crowded apples. 🍎

Wild fennel flowers are in season right now, growi

Wild fennel flowers are in season right now, growing and self-seeding all over your garden. Pick them and scatter the flowers over potato salad or salads or soups. But don’t if you don’t like the taste of aniseed. Have picked this bunch and am going to splash heavily with water and try to freeze. First I’ll keep them in a dark place to rid them of any creepy crawlies though. #wildfood #freefood #wildfennel

I made a rhubarb crumble as a summer dessert. I us

I made a rhubarb crumble as a summer dessert. I usually associate crumble with colder weather but I had the urge. I’ve been obsessed with crumble since discovering a street food stall @crumbleshack that only sells crumble @womadfestival . Rhubarb was on offer so I roasted it gently with some sugar and cinnamon. I just discovered via @davidlebovitz that a crumble is called a fruit crisp in the USA. I have to say, a crumble is one of the few culinary things that the French have nicked from us. They love it! And pronounce it in the most delightful Gallic fashion. #crumble #pudding #summerdessert #rhubarb

Been given a pile of apples from my friend Sylvia’s garden so today I made tartes tatins, an Irish apple cake and 3 tartes aux pommes. #apple #cookingsaturday #glut

Sunday lunch. I did a bbq on my @biggreenegguk in

Sunday lunch. I did a bbq on my @biggreenegguk in the middle of the day. I should have waited till later as I was a red faced mess serving lunch. Also the hinge won’t keep the lid up- not sure why. The simplest salad: wedges of iceberg with blue cheese dressing poured over. Garlic mushrooms uncooked then cooked, with yoghurt naans in the background sprinkled with onion seeds; pacific salmon with fennel flowers on the egg; mastiha and rose liqueur from @visit_chios , rhubarb crumble with ice cream.

Snake pie filled with cheese and spinach with cinn

Snake pie filled with cheese and spinach with cinnamon and sesame seeds. Slightly untidier than I intended because of the thicker filo than usual but absolutely delicious. I used both feta and cheddar. I’ll continue to experiment with this recipe. #greek #pie #tiropita

Lemon rosemary polenta loaf cake from my book Msma

Lemon rosemary polenta loaf cake from my book Msmarmitelover’s secret tea party. Haven’t made it for a while and one is always worried that recipes don’t work but it’s worked beautifully. Currently I’m trying to use up ingredients in my pantry before starting again. I seem to have a lot of cornmeal/ polenta/ nixtamalised corn to use up. Last week I made a gorgeous cornbread- going to do that again.

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