About
My name is Kim Bucknole. I am very happily married with four adult children. I wear glasses to read. I have a knee that aches thanks to a football injury and two operations. I am overweight. I enjoy food and drink and cooking. Years ago, for a short time I was employed as a grill chef. However, I write about food and associated matters as a civilian not a professional. I have considerable experience in publishing magazines and local newspapers, as a managing editor and in management. The picture of me below was taken with the Photo Booth application on my MacBook Pro, late at night after a long day’s website-building in my corner office in the farmhouse where we live. I must have been feeling “old” if the sepia effect is anything to go by. I guess I applied the vignette effect for the same reason. I use this pic as my avatar on Twitter and elsewhere.
We used to live in the city, actually a state capital. Then we moved 500 miles out of town. The air is clean and the water pure. The fruit and vegetables and meat and fish are fresh and plentiful.
Sepia-toned and vignetted!
In time, we came to recognise that quite a number of things we were accustomed to purchase in the city were simply not stocked in country stores, even in country towns.
It’s true that your life may not depend on being able to get small Sicilian capers packed in salt, but that sort of thing gnaws at you and you add it to the list of things to pick up when you next return to the city. Or you may be able to buy large capers but you want the smallest type, or packed in white wine vinegar not brine. Did I mention that we are quite partial to capers? And caper berries – who ever saw them in a country store?
If you live the rural idyll, do you know where you can buy Gentleman’s Relish? Is there a substitute for Sharwood’s Green Label Mango Chutney? What about San Pellegrino acqua minerale? Or Maldon sea salt?
Sometimes you feel like crying out loud. You find a store which has the brand of tea you prefer but never carries the “Traditional Afternoon” blend you crave. You find qualita oro coffee on the shelf but your taste buds are twanging for crema e aroma or perhaps, crema e gusto.
I am sure you get the picture. We are spoiled. Spoiled by overseas travel and by city specialty stores.
We found we could obtain a lot of what we wanted online and in time decided to create gourmetprovidores.com to talk about and discuss some of the things which are not indispensable to life but which are enriching of our experience.
So that there be no misapprehension, we offer some things for sale on this site, generally earning a small commission, which helps support the website.