An authentic taste of Italy

My mother - the networker, blogster and textile-artist extraordinaire - has a nack for using the Internet to its full advantage. She's the goddess of the search engine; if she can't find what you're looking for, it probably wasn't worth discovering in the first place. She's a social network aficionado and is often found glued to her emails.

Now, you're always told (particularly as a small child when you're first allowed to get your grubby hands on the Internet) that the net is full of lots of friendly people but you must not, under ANY circumstances, meet the people that you chat to. After all, they might turn out to be weirdos. Quite right too and this was preached to me from a young age. This rule, apparently, doesn't stretch to adults. Or mothers, anyway, because my Mum has met all kinds of wonderful people (and her fair share of weirdos... joke!) through various virtual meeting places and happily goes off on merry little jaunts around the country with her new posse.

Anyway, she's recently Facebook friended a guy (known through mutual friends) who rented us a gorgeous apartment in Florence a few years ago. While perusing his website, I came across some of his lovely recipes. He seems to be something of a seafood fan with lovely looking recipes for scallops, squid and langoustines. Despite the Florentine connection, the recipes remind me of the amazing seafood market in Venice. I do miss Italy!