I'm married to an italian girl, can recommend them highly. Good looking, good in every room, and can cook something other than chips. When I met her I was under eight stone and frankly malnourished, she and her mother decided I was too skinny to make a good husband but rather than ditching me, (which would have been the obvious option,) they colluded to bring me up to a decent weight. Fantastic pasta dishes, slow-cooked beef or whatever was cheap at the market, osso bucco, zabaglione, you name it they cooked it and I gained two stone in two years. Result.