Apropos of very little, I’m just here to remind you of one more thing about Italy that Dawg may have left out of his travel journals. I don’t know how he could have forgotten this!

Did you know that Italy is the land of casu marzu, the Sardinian jumping cheese? This delicacy consists of a local pecorino deliberately infested with the maggotty larvae of the “cheese fly”. Apparently, you spread the (possibly “weeping”) cheese/maggot mix (remember kids, it’s only safe to eat if the maggots are still wriggling!) on a small slice of bread and attempt to eat it before the 8mm maggots jump into your eyes. And they can jump 15cm, apparently! And according to aficionados, which is apparently a decent-sized chunk of the local population, the cheese is perfectly safe (when the maggots are alive!), and there is probably little risk of the maggots surviving your digestive tract and burrowing through your gut, causing abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. Even smaller risk of them reaching your brain and settling into your pleasure centres, turning you into a neurotransmitter-addled slave for their wormy majesties.

Italy, eh? Always thinking up noodly ways of making traditional foods better. Needless to say, I’m scheduling this post to appear right before dinner for your maximum enjoyment. So when’s that next trip to Sardinia?