Marina ditches the plastic
A Sicilian cook from is ditching plastic packaging to launch a new range of classic Italian meals contained in reusable pottery dishes.
Marina Midolo, 51, will be unveiling her authentic lasagne made with homemade pasta at Llangollen Food Festival on October 19 and 20.
She set up her kitchen at her smallholding in Cyffylliog, near Ruthin, with the help of a development grand from Denbighshire County Council.
Initially, Marina concentrated on producing Italian sweets, cakes and savouries which are on sale at delicatessens, community shops and hotels across the region.
Now Marina is looking to expand her product range but wants to ensure there is no plastic packaging or anything else about her products that could harm the environment.
So she and her partner Peter Lamb have come up with the idea of a new reusable pottery dish that can be refilled with new meals or returned and the deposit paid at the time of purchase returned to the customer.
She says she will be ready to launch her first pottery dish lasagne meal at this year’s Llangollen Food Festival.
It will be her second visit to the popular event which has been named as one of the Top 10 food festivals in the UK.
“My idea is to launch a new lasagne meal at this year’s festival. The meal will be prepared by me and will be sold uncooked.
“Customers can buy a pot which they then put in an oven at home for around 30 minutes and then eat the lasagne straight from the earthenware pot.
“The dish can then be returned to the point of purchase for the deposit to be refunded or the customer can keep the pot. But the main thing is there is simply no plastic packaging involved.
“We want to take it things back 50 years or more before we began blighting the environment with plastic waste.”
She added: “The biggest problem I face is how to seal the pots as I don’t want to have to cover the pots with a plastic film. However, we have found a food friendly sealant that we can use to seal the lids in place and keep the uncooked food fresh.
“The lasagne will be oven ready and made with my own homemade pasta. It will be a true lasagne made using only the finest herbs and in the traditional Italian way. Let’s just say it won’t be an Anglicised version of an Italian classic!
