Oh the charm of my local veggie lady, who sets up stall in Tossicia on Friday mornings rain or shine. She oozes rapport and could teach some of the so-called ‘Retail Experts’ a thing or two about selling and getting your customer to come back time after time.

Each week she gives us a special little freebie treat, this week her parting gift was a huge bag of sweet and beautiful new season peas from Puglia; not too heavy on food miles over the border so to speak, with but a skip & jump over Molise, and of course using an environmentally-friendly brown paper bag with a little array of butterflies printed on one side for good measure, arh those little extra touches that shopping locally in Italy delivers.  It’s such a shame that supermarkets still insist on plastic bags to pick up your fruit and veg. Now it’s just decisions decisions as to how and what they will be served with…