Stephen Jardine: Fly the flag for good Scottish food

Looking back, I suppose it was years in the making. Working in London, I'd heard one too many jokes about chips being Scotland's vegetable of choice. Then living in Paris I watched shellfish from Scrabster being unloaded from lorries and sold at my local street market. The final piece in the jigsaw was seeing my sister-in-law struggle to make a living from sheep farming while the shelves of her local supermarket were piled high with imported lamb.

Somehow, the great local produce we see all around us in Scotland had ended up off the menu and replaced by convenience foods and green beans imported from Kenya.

But what can one person do about it? The answer came in a eureka moment on Burns Night. We were sitting with friends having polished off a fine supper with me, as usual, bemoaning how great our food is yet what a bad press it receives. Spurred on by whisky, the answer suddenly seemed obvious. I'd eat only Scottish produce from Burns Night to St Andrew's Night and thus prove beyond all doubt that our food isn't all deep fried and instead is some of the greatest in the world.

At the same time I would be supporting hard-pressed Scottish food producers and cutting down on the madness of food miles. We all toasted the start of my great adventure.

The next morning, alongside the hangover was an extra headache. For this experiment to work I really needed my family to sign up with me. They gingerly agreed but with some rules and stipulations. Ten months without wine and coffee would have ended in divorce so we decided to concentrate on just what we ate and with that in place, Eating for Scotland began.

Everything was made from scratch and that meant more visits to food shops and more time spent in the kitchen. Since supermarket distribution was a key reason why it was so hard to locally source Scottish food, we also turned to smaller food retailers, farmers' markets and farm shops. Shopping definitely took more time, but there was one big thing everyone wanted to know - was eating Scottish more expensive? The answer was slightly, but not that much.

Yes, local shops don't have the buying power of the big supermarkets, but you also don't end up paying for food that goes to waste or being tempted by special offers, chocolate and donuts piled up near the tills.

Looking back, the first few months were the toughest with no Scottish fruit available and only root vegetables in the shops.

There were compensations. I was chronicling our experience on TV and in a diary in a newspaper and the response was amazing. People far and wide seemed genuinely delighted that someone was standing up to the supermarkets and championing local food producers. I received lots of letters of encouragement, recipes from far and wide and e-mails from others doing similar projects in Canada, France and Sweden. Inevitably, it also attracted self-interest from politicians who saw votes in it and from supermarkets who wanted to sponsor the initiative.

I had the good sense to keep them at arm's length, even when one major retailer offered me a luxury trip to the Highlands so I could "understand" its attitude to Scottish produce.

As the months passed, the food journey got easier. I was walking through the Taste food festival in the Meadows when a woman walked up to me with a basket of the first Scottish strawberries, picked that morning on Tayside. Deprived of fresh fruit since January, I devoured them on the spot and, believe me, strawberries never tasted better.

Over the summer I visited farm shops far and wide, met cheesemakers, bakers, fishermen and beekeepers and even helped turn out Arbroath smokies in their home town.

As each month passed, our enthusiasm for eating Scottish grew. Yes, we missed tuna and camembert, but in its place we had salmon and Criffel cheese from Loch Arthur.

For everything we missed, there was a new food discovery.

Autumn brought mushrooms from Perthshire and apples from Fife and, of course, fabulous Scottish game. And just when the struggle had become a routine, it was reaching an end. St Andrew's Night marked the finale of the experiment and we finished it in style with a celebration of the foods we'd enjoyed most during the year, surrounded by the people who'd helped us make it happen.

And then what? Well, the experience changed things forever for us. We shop differently and we cook differently, because over ten months we discovered buying local not only makes better sense, it tastes better.

Two years on, eating Scottish is also less madcap and more mainstream. Every chef worth his salt has local and seasonal produce on his menu because that is what customers expect. Supermarkets have also woken up to that with specific branding for Scottish produce.

It is great progress, but more still needs to be done, especially by politicians who talk a good game but have failed to tackle huge issues like government procurement which should see Scottish produce being served in every school and hospital.

By eating Scottish for a day, a week or a month, or even just by slightly changing your shopping preferences, you can support Scottish food producers, cut damage to the environment and feed your family better and tastier food. Now more than ever, you know it makes sense.

Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight runs until Sunday. Scots are being encouraged to take the "Eat Scottish" pledge by agreeing to enjoy only home- produced food and drink for a day, week or as long as they want. There's even a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/eatscottish. For further information and recipes, log on to www.scottishfoodanddrinkfortnight.co.uk

A TASTE OF SCOTLAND

Did you know?

Scotland produces over a billion litres of milk every year.

Around 80 per cent of all food and drink businesses in Scotland are family run.

㩘 bottles of Scotch whisky are exported every second and whisky accounts for a quarter of UK food and drink exports.

More than 337,000 people are employed in the food and drink sector in Scotland.

Each month there are more than 20 seasonal Scottish products available.

Many of the foodstuffs that Scottish businesses produce - soft fruit, milk, beef - are key elements in a healthy diet.