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.