British food is delicious!

[Carlos]

To find good quality Snails, after a night of drizzling or light rain, people would go early in the morning in the massive artichoke fields near the town of Brindisi (about 30 Km from my town in Italy).

After that, they fed the Snails white flour for a couple of days, only then were ready to be cooked or sold.

For longer lasting, they would put the Snails in boxes with dirt and white flour, eventually, the Snails would retreat in their shells by forming a dry white seal.
Add water to wake them up :)

Yes, we do it that way too.



I think that is how the hunters began to make friends with the farmers.


There are even fairs like this one in Córdoba with 46 stalls selling snails.

We also like this smaller "cabrillas" variety and with those lists we like them very much, with a broth made with herbs and thistles from the field, they are delicious as well as the drunk broth.

[Angela]

I come often in NY City. Close by where I live is big fruit market. Now is the season of apples and outside there are crates with apples, visibly appealing, large sizes, healthy looking. Until you taste them! What a disappointment when I compare with my country of origin apples. I think they come from New York area, but it must be the soil. So I insist quality of food depends where the ingredients are coming from. England imports large amounts of food from elsewhere, so it could be their food nowadays taste good. In Mediterranean area there are about 300 sunny days per year so every food has enough heat and light to be ripe. I don't think that's the case with English produce

It's not the case with American produce either. Plus, they pick the fruit when it's not ripe to account for the time that will be eaten up by transport and stocking in supermarkets.

It's more than the soil, and the shorter growing time, however.

They've changed the varieties for visual appeal or size and sometimes flavor is sacrificed. That's the case with tomatoes, which are absolutely terrible in the U.S. in my opinion. The ones I buy from farm stands on Long Island in August and September have ripened on the vine, but they're still nowhere as flavorful as they are in Italy or other countries bordering the Med.

This is what they wanted visually and for ease in transport (they don't bruise as easily), but they bred the flavor right out of them.



Some local farmers have gone back to what they call "heirloom tomatoes", which are not uniform at all, but are better tasting, and for whatever reason the cherry tomatoes are still good. Hard to slice cherry tomatoes
for a sandwich, though. :)



Even with Italian tomatoes, however, the rich, volcanic soil of the areas of Campania near Vesuvio produce tomatoes that are better than any others I've ever eaten. All the produce in Campania is fabulous. Ours in the north doesn't compare at all, although infinitely better than what I can get here. Their seafood is much, much better as well, although the Adriatic coast aquatic resources come close.