The main news this week is that we found some British sugar (hurrah) so have been enjoying some slightly sweetened food. Last weekend was a bit of a dead loss as we travelled to a large food centre we had heard about (advertised as serving local food) only to find that vegetables were just labelled ‘English’ (and others had no label) with staff unable to say where it came from.
It seems a fairly common trait amongst farm shops, particularly the smarter deli-type farm shops, to have premium local meat alongside other products from all over the place – even though the point is supposed to be to promote local produce.
In other news, I visited the Birmingham farmers market yesterday, and can report that it is not good – with few stalls and limited produce. Indeed, there were no vegetables at all and just a handful of meat stalls. There was one stall from Malvern selling apples and bottled fruit, so I decided to break the rules and buy some pickled walnuts and cherries. They were both grown in Malvern but include ingredients which we do not know the origins.
8 Comments
February 22, 2008 at 6:01 pm
In many respects Lent is not the best time for such an experiment, especially when it falls so early. In Summer and Autumn it’s much easier to have a tasty, healthy, varied diet using local food.
March 3, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I’ve held back on asking the obvious lenten food question, but here goes: have you figured out how to make hot cross buns from local ingredients?
March 4, 2008 at 9:00 am
Um.. no
Interesting how many of our ‘national’ foods include ingredients that we cannot grow in this country.
March 7, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I think this goes to show that for centuries our ancestors have relied on imported luxury goods to cheer up a diet based on local British ingredients, especially in Winter.
So perhaps it’s not so much that we should avoid these products altogether, but that we should treat them in the same way our ancestors did, using them sparingly even if the financial cost for us is very small in comparison to what it was for them. Of course buying the slightly more expensive Fair Trade option can help us see these products as luxuries.
March 7, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Indeed. We desperately need to understand that many of those things we think of as being ‘common and everyday’ are actually luxuries and should be treated as such.
April 2, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Just wondering if you’ve drawn any conclusions, learnt any lessons etc from this experiment.
April 3, 2008 at 10:38 am
I have, but have limited time to blog here at the moment.
April 3, 2008 at 7:17 pm
O.K.