Last Wednesday I visited our local Farmers Market with my friend Sarah and came back laden down with goodies. Our village has a Farmers Market on the second Wednesday of each month and sometimes we get a visit from a travelling French Market. I was sad to hear that the French Market won’t be back before Christmas; I wanted to stock up on Fleur De Sel.

Our first stop was the Olive & Things stand. They have a fantastic range of marinated olives as well as sundried tomatoes, giant butter-beans in a thick tomato sauce and pickled garlic. I ended up buying a small tub of pickled garlic which has a nice sweet and sour tang to it, as well as a fantastic crunch! I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it yet, so suggestions are very welcome!

We then pottered around the corner to a stall run by our local beekeeper. This was a surprise as I had no idea we had one! I suppose I should feel bad about swatting so many bees this summer…. They had a wide range of honeys, some infused with sprigs of herbs and others with walnuts or almonds. I was more interested in their selection of jams and jellies though.

After sampling lots of different plum jams I settled upon one infused with all the lovely flavours of mulled wine. Very seasonal. I also picked up a jar of apple jelly (amazing on ordinary toast and sublime when spread on cinnamon raisin bread!) and also a jar of quince jelly. Quince is still a novelty fruit for me; I’ve had Membrillo (Spanish quince paste) which I adored but I’ve yet to actually find any of the fruit on sale anywhere…. I’m beginning to think that it’s a mythical fruit.

Whilst Sarah sampled chutneys I strolled over to Antonio & Co’s stand to taste their olive oils. After a very involved conversation about the evils of Bertolli and receiving numerous assurances that their olive oil was really from olives grown in Puglia and processed there too, I bought a largeish bottle of organic extra-virgin. They have a wide range of oils; from organic first-pressing extra-virgin oil to some nice light oil for every-day cooking.

We spotted what seemed to be a new stall, selling fruit drinks. If I remember rightly there was Rhubarb, Damson, Elderflower “Champagne”, Old-Fashioned Lemonade, and Ginger Beer. I sampled some of the Rhubarb and Damson, and absolutely loved the Damson. Not too sweet and intensely fruity. Also, it was luridly pink and I can’t resist brightly coloured (naturally coloured though!) foodstuffs. The Rhubarb was almost as lurid, but it just wasn’t rhubarb-y enough for my tastes.

Our final stop was the Hampshire Game stand and bought a pack of Wild Boar Sausages. These sausages were particularly plump and were simply made from wild boar meat, leeks, apples, a little rusk, spices and seasoning. Nothing nasty or artifical about thse! Alas, no picture of the sausages – we ate them that night with some good mashed potatoes and balsamic onions. They were succulent and bursting with flavour. I don’t think I’d have known that they were wild boar meat though; they tasted like very, very good pork.

All in all, a fun morning. So much nicer than shopping at the supermarket!

I’ve just come back from a foray to my favourite delicatessen where I was actually quite restrained! In amongst my purchases, I have a gorgeous slab of Norwegian Brown Cheese… I first encountered this when I visited a friend in Oslo for a long weekend in ‘99 and became more than a little fond of the cheese. Its a very sweet cheese, with only a tiny hint of savoury to it. If you’ve ever had a Caramac chocolate bar, its quite like that but fudgier. It is very rich, hence you can only (realistically) eat it in thin slices slivered off with a cheese plane.

I like it on oatcakes or rye crispbreads at breakfast, but Marit (my Norwegian friend) melted some into a venison stew which was just incredible! One day I’ll have to bribe her for the recipe. Of course, I’ll have to (a) persuade Dave that there is nothing unnatural about a sweet cheese and (b) convince him that venison is nice!

If you spot some in a shop, I urge you to try it! I’m told that its generally a “love or hate” thing (like Marmite!), but I absolutely adored it from the very first bite.