Farmer's Market

I went to Leeds Farmer's Market today.

There were a lot of good stalls and a lot of nice stuff, but...

There were less stalls than previously. I especially missed one or two stalls, but the stall that does the most phenomenal pork pies was still there.

Also, there weren't many farmers there. There were stalls selling baked goods, and stalls selling crafted goods like home made jewellery. There were stalls with olives and wine. There were some cheese stalls and meat stalls, but I didn't really feel tempted by a lot of them. I bought some sausages. There was an offer of a tray of a pork joint, a pack of bacon and four packs of sausages for £10. I did look. The pork joint would have barely fed our household for one meal and looked very fatty. The bacon wouldn't have furnished all of us with a bacon sandwich and didn't look that nice and the four packs of sausages held, in total, sixteen sausages. And the sausages were a bit on the small side.

In one way this is a bit unfair as I am used to supermarket meat, which can have all the benefits of added colours, extra water to make it look plump, fancy lighting etc. But this just didn't appeal, I think it looked just too fatty and a little bit yellow and curling, though that may have been because it was the display model. And how many joints of pork are described as pot roast? So I may be wrong with my instinctive rejection, but I don't regret it. I think I would have been more tempted by higher quality but more expensive stuff. It's what I have gone for in the past at the farmer's market.

To be honest, I don't think that the people selling there are making a lot after paying for their stalls and all their overheads, and in these belt-tightening days there are not so many people willing to pay premium prices for premium products. Though some of the cheese stalls are excellent. If you ever get a chance to try the liquorice cheese then take the opportunity with both hands!

Little bear was very good, chatted away happily to the lady who sold us some (extremely nice) cakes and the lady who sold us the (amazingly fantastic and tasty) pork pies. And we came away with - pork pies for lunch, potatoes that were really, really fresh (and there weren't that many stalls selling these), black kale (tasted very nice), cheese for darling father, and a very nice piece of naturally smoked Whitby Haddock which did lovely for tea, just in butter and milk. I would have tried the recipe for left over haddock in the Year's Cookery if any had been left over, but there wasn't.

Nearly a week without a takeaway. This is unprecedented!