8 June 2012 – Now that the springtime, hungry gap part of Eating Local food challenge has ended, it is interesting to look back and see what we have learned from this exercise. In general, we found eating local was not the unpleasant experience some in the house were expecting, far from it. In fact it broadened our food perspectives and left us with more to choose from in the long run. Here are some of the things we discovered from Eating Local
- All the variety and good quality of the Farmers Market in central Cambridge every Sunday morning. It is no more expensive than supermarket produce and far fresher.
- A wider choice of meats than the meat-eaters in the household had been used to – venison, pigeon, rabbit and Midsummer beef.
- Munns Rape Seed Oil from Westfield Farm Chatteris, which I had never used before, turned out to be the only oil available locally. We found it tasty and useful for all the cooking and dressing we had previously used olive oil for. We will continue to use it since it is much cheaper. Though a new bottle costs £5, you can refill your bottle for only £3 from the egg man between the cake man and the bread stall opposite Great St Mary’s Church at the Sunday morning Farmers Market.
- I made all our own bread during the project and found it so delicious I will continue to make it, though maybe not all the time.
- One of our exemptions was milk delivered to our door by the milkman and we changed our delivery from all semi-skimmed to one semi-skimmed and one full cream milk. The creamy sort sure tastes good on cereals and in coffee!
Posted by Bev