Every woman's dream - fruit and vegetables!
We are back from holidays and on the way home from airport I visited a local supermarket to fill the fridge. Looking at the vegetable selection my face fell. The selection and quality was poor.
I have to say that this time of year even the Russians have a wider selection, better quality and more realistic pricing system. At least in there they get what is in season; and at the moment it was succulent varieties of cherries, that were very cheap, strawberries at give-away prices, peaches and nectarines in season and raspberries just beginning to appear with higher prices. They were stored in huge enamel measures and looked so juicy in the sun. Vegetables were equally good quality and abundant.
In Finland I was simply blown away. There was an open market every morning with fresh produce directly from farms. There are farms that bake bread for market maybe twice a week and others that come every day with a fresh fruit and vegetable selection. There was two large supermarkets surrounding the market place and both were doing good business too. In food the top line in labels is country of origin. Most commonly fresh produce is locally sourced and it says so in large letters too. In smaller print one can read what the product is - I mean a cucumber is a cucumber - we all know what it looks like and then the price of course. None of this nonsense that I have often seen in Tesco where home grown and imported vegetables are in the same container and the country of origin in tiny letters printed in an obscure place.
The other thing I liked was availability of advice. All potato varieties were clearly named, there were six locally grown the day I counted and beside them was a list what each variety was best for. There was two boxes of each; washed and unwashed [cheaper] for choice. Finns think pre-packed food is suspicious, my mum in her 80's walked to the market place rather than bought her potatoes in a plastic bag.
Most impressive was the variety. Large boxes of spring cabbage (I had forgotten they existed) just arrived as did small new beetroots in bunches. As in Russia, in addition to locally grown the crops in season further south in Europe were available in large quantities too. There was no push for pineapple or mango - this is the local high season and people were taking full advantage of it.
I cannot understand why, in a country able to grow a much wider variety of fruit and vegetables for a far longer season than Finland we eat like poor Russians in mid March? Sadly we do it year round, every year. Makes me wish for green fingers and a large vegetable patch, unfortunately I was blessed with a killer thumb when it comes to all things green.