This little piggy went to market

This weekend was our first official Meating People special outing since launching the blog. In reality we’ve eased into the market shopping and trying new ethical restaurant slowly over the last few weeks, and let’s face it, every meal is really blog fodder at this point. But I digress, this Saturday the Meating People team – and our various associates – trundled off to the farmers market at the Collingwood Children’s Farm, which happens on the second Saturday of every month.

A little side goal of mine, as well as eating ethically and locally farmed goodies, is to try to cook more and be healthier. Let’s face it; it’s pretty easy to only eat ethically farmed meat when your diet consists of Twisties, Lindt chocolate, brie and two-minute noodles. I was shocked to discover that the farmers market didn’t even sell Twisties – WTF?

It was a slightly drizzly day but the market was still pretty popular. I arrived at about 11.45am, which is much too late. It’s important to get to the markets fairly early. My tardy arrival was the first problem – the produce at a small farmers market is already fairly limited, arrive 3 or 4 hours after it opens and it’s REALLY limited. Free range turkey – sold out. Free-range pork and bacon – almost sold out. Sweet tarts – sold out. You see the pattern. That said, I was actually pretty impressed by the number of stalls and by the range. There were outlets selling chicken, beef, venison, turkey and pork. Wes, do you recall if anyone was selling lamb? There was a lady selling pies and sausages of mutton and beef. There was also the full range of fruit and veg. I steered clear of the gourmet cheese stalls – my kryptonite. And, oh dear, there was a micro-brewery and a gourmet chocolate seller.

I take away from the market a few key lessons. Firstly, as above, be early. You don’t want to limit your choices. Secondly, have a plan. I ended up with apples, oranges, apple and lemon juice, some streaky belly bacon, beef ‘savvy dog’ sausages, a cauliflower, a broccoli and caramel roasted almond chocolate (words cannot describe). These ingredients, though wonderful, do not form a meal. Or even the basics for a meal. They’re single ingredients for about three meals. With a plan I might have had something more useful. The next lesson is talk to people. Wes is much better at this than me. Next time I will be less shy about asking the farmers about their produce – it’ll make this a better read I assume. The final lesson is that fruit bought at the farmers market is HUGE – apples and oranges the size of your head.

I’ve also come away with some questions. I assumed, naively perhaps, that since I was dealing with family farmers, not factory farmers, I didn’t have to worry so much about their practices. I figured, even where it wasn’t signed as such – though a lot were – that most of the meat was, if not free-range, then at least better treated than the supermarket stuff. Is this fair? Can I trust if farmers tell me their animals are beloved and pampered? Or do I need to be so strict as to only buy free-range?

I’ve used a few of my purchases already – I used the sausages in a pasta dish and they were sweet and delish. I ate the chocolate quickly and unattractively. But most importantly, you recall the carbonara of last week’s post? Carbonara is my favourite meal ever. So with my streaky free-range old style bacon I had the wonderful Nick make carbonara. It was out of this world. The sweet smoky flavour of the bacon filled the whole dish. That my friends is having your cake and eating it too.

Want to go to farmers markets? There are A LOT.
http://www.vicfarmersmarkets.org.au/

Budget (approximate since I didn’t get receipts)
Bacon - $10 (the priciest item but no regrets)
Basket of head sized oranges - $5
3 giant golden delicious apples - $3
2l Apple & Lemon juice - $6
Two large ‘savvy dog’ sausages - $4
Caramel roasted almond chocolate - $5
Cauliflower & broccoli - $5

Soon I’ll be talking fancy restaurants and foie gras – don’t judge me, it’s all in the name of science!