Finally got round to trying the local farmers market (http://headingleyfarmersmarket.com/) today, and this is what we bought:
2 loaves of fresh bread, some very strong cheese, apples, carrots, parsnips, onions, strawberries, mushrooms, apple juice and – best of all – EASTER CHOCOLATES!! Tempting as all the £1 Easter Egg offers in the supermarkets may be, they’re obviously off-limits to those of us who have given up supermarkets for Lent, which means we just had to buy our Easter rations from our friends, the fabulous Cutting Cake Patisserie. It feels like we’ve definitely gone for quality not quantity this year, as, rather than the usual haul of sickly sweet Cadburys Cream Eggs, chocolate buttons and the like, today we bought:
- 1 pack of dairy fudge (which I know I should open up and place strategically round the house as part of the annual Easter Egg Hunt, but I am so very tempted to eat it all myself)
- 1 chocolate lolly each for 9YO and 3YO, beautifully wrapped with a ribbon (again, also to be used in Easter Egg Hunt)
- 1 large(ish) handmade chocolate egg for them to share, with truffles inside (which I really will have to eat)
So, that’s Easter sorted out, and I was pleasantly surprised by the range of other produce on sale at the market today. There was meat, fish, cheese, fruit and vegetables, bread and lots more fresh produce. The organic fruit and veg stall apparently also do home deliveries, and could tempt me to give our existing suppliers the elbow. I’m starting to see how we could permanently reduce our supermarket dependence, combining places like this with shops like Out of this World, where we’ve been buying dried and tinned groceries over the last few weeks. Today I spent £30, which seems like a lot – but as I’ve said previously, not when you compare it to the £60-£100 I could spend on a Saturday morning in Sainsburys.
After the farmers market, we called into our local butcher on the way home, for some cold meat and sausage rolls, which combined with the fresh bread and cheese from the market to make a fantastic ploughmans-type lunch. Days like this could really persuade me to make our supermarket-free Lent a permanent life style…
kirstwrites 