Food News – February 2012

So, it's February. While this food section did its part to foster romance in last month's special (did a damn fine job by the way), we know that Valentine's Day is one of those times we're supposed to offer culinary advice of one form or another. With that in mind, our token lovers' tip is a Singles' Wine Tasting. Malmaison's Director of Wine, the improbably-named Johnny Walker, will lead all you loners through a wide world of wine, canapes and awkward small talk. You might learn something – that something might well be that you shouldn't get drunk with strangers on the most forcibly-romantic night of the year, but don't say we didn't try to help.

The 5th Kingussie Food on Film Festival is upon us, foodier and filmier than ever. It's a brilliant concept, marrying the sloth of eating and sitting around with a healthy Highland setting. The programme is packed with cookery demos, markets and tastings, and a host of showings ranging from celebrity chef biopics to that one with the Oompa Loompas and the Waco fella from Blazing Saddles. Oh, and an event consisting of a Chaplin film and a full carvery lunch. You did indeed read that right. Chaplin and roast meat, together at last.

If you like the idea of food and film coming together, but fear the wild North with its enormous ginger cows, unforgiving weather and incomprehensible accents, then Meals on Reels could be for you. For starters, it's at The Mound in the middle of Edinburgh, with excellent local and regional transport links close by. A three-course meal packed with ostentatiously Scottish ingredients is on the menu along with a series of short films and extracts from the archives of the National Library of Scotland, telling the stories behind the production and advertising of a whole host of Scottish foods from back in olden times. Well, the 1930s, but that is a while ago now.

Now for some science. Woo, science! Nuclear explosions! Bagless vacuum cleaners! Chimps in spacesuits! Well now you can add food to that list, with the Royal Botanic Gardens' Scottish Science on a Plate exhibition. Find out where your food comes from (we'll guess plants and animals), and who had a hand in making it (farmers, robots, shadowy corporations), then visit the Gardens' Edible Garden project for advice and tips to see if you can make a decent fist of it yourself (unlikely, but worth a crack).