Local food
The weather forecast was Armageddon and a good chance of being snowed in for a while. As usual I went and filled the larder planning for a serious cookout with plenty hungry mouths at home. The snow never arrived but the food seems to be disappearing with the usual alarming rate.
As the person in charge of spending the money for ingredients I want to support my local producers and source as much of our food as possible from somewhere else than Tesco. My shopping is slightly hampered and unbalanced as most of us have serious food intolerances. For example I never worry where to find a fresh free range chicken as eating one would lead to a serious, yet spectacular results and a fight over the prime position at the bathroom door.
Meat that we can eat I find surprisingly easy. Every time the freezer is empty I book one of the bullocks to the local slaughter house and he will return within three weeks neatly boxed and labelled. Pork is equally at hand as a friend keeps one for her freezer and looks after mine too to give her little piggie some company.
Vegetables! The simple option would be to grow them myself. I have tried and I am a useless gardener. It all grows, but never to a reasonable size. After the last big storm blew away my greenhouse I decided to call it a day.
The local butcher stocks leeks, potatoes, carrots and turnips. The Deli across the street has soft fruit in summer time and Seville oranges just now. That is it bar supermarkets. When a local veggie box scheme started I was one of the first ones to sign up. The produce was good but it was very much one size fits all. I never got enough potatoes to make one meal for the family, yet I struggled with my weekly 20 onions. She would not take into consideration that there are many things we cannot eat - so some weeks I gave most of it away. Then was the month when we got two gigantic red cabbages each week. I now have many recipes to tackle the vegetable, and it became a family favourite, but when faced with a fifth week of the same stuff I resigned. Mind you, so did the lady's polytunnels, both blew away in a snowstorm and she is yet to return to business.
The next cunning plan was to eat the surplus from another friend's garden. They are a family of self-sufficient ex townies and grow everything with enthusiasm. I soon found out that they seriously lacked on the skills front and had no quality control. Lots of my share was either past its best or I was sharing it with slugs, caterpillars and such-like.
I can hear your brain screaming - go to the farmer's market woman! Well.....the local one is good for home baking and potatoes. The better ones are a minimum 20 miles away and operate on Saturday mornings. The sellers on the good markets travel up to 60 miles to get there, add on my mileage and the six beetroot's I was after produce a gigantic carbon footprint. And I have a thing about Saturdays, that is when my family is home and I want to be here too, cooking for them, not searching for food while they survive on cold bits from the fridge.