Day 14 - Farmers Market and a Birthday Barbeque

I decided, since it was the day after the Food for the Future event which had taken over my life AND it was a few days before my birthday AND it was the day of the Winchester farmers' market, that I would celebrate my birthday today and not stick to £2 for the whole day. Notice the bunting in the picture above demonstrating that this is not an ordinary BBQ, it is a birthday celebration BBQ.

In the end, I ate a perfectly reasonable breakfast and lunch, and then ate loads at dinner. Actually, the lunch was mostly supplied by the free samples of chutneys and cheeses and things (plus a bite of someone's water buffalo burger and a bite of a hog roast sandwich). I heart the Winchester Farmers' Market.

Some cheeses from Loosehanger farm. I'm glad they didn't make the guy who served me wear their silly cheese hats that they sometimes have. I bought the little wheel of goat's cheese that you can just make out in the front of the lefthand basket. About 250g for £4.50. Apparently that's a good price for their cheese because it's more expensive to cut and package the wedges.

Other highlights from the farm? We got two aubergine for half price (you can't barter with ASDA people... yet another reason to love the market) I finally got my 5L of rapeseed oil for £20--that's about what you'd pay at an ethnic food store for 5L of olive oil. It's also half the price of what I had been paying for the same oil in a 500mL bottle. Also, everyone I was with was super excited about the market and I think I have a dedicated group who are willing to go with me! I hope that the other people who live up in London start going more often to markets near them, too.

After going to the farmers' market, we went to relax in a local pub called the Black Boy (I find that name slightly strange.... It's behind the Black Rat). We read the paper, the boys amused themselves by drawing penies over pictures in the newspaper, and our butter started to melt (which of course we didn't realise until we were almost home. Oops.

Here's some of the local spread at the BBQ. You can just see in the corner my basket that I carried around the market and then Paul helped me carry back. By the end it was REALLY heavy. There was talk of doing a photo like a cornucopia showing off all the stuff we bought in an artistic way, but I totally forgot. Oops. Maybe next time!

Anyway, I'm not going to bother doing a breakdown because I know that we ate a lot more than
£2. However, what we ate was the following:

Breakfast: Mac had toast (?). Megan had toast with peanut butter and jelly
Lunch: We got lots of free samples from the farmers' market, and then came back and Mac had some more Moroccan stew.
Dinner: We brought a garden salad and strawberry shortcake to Hannah, Ed and Dan's for a BBQ. I ate a local Hampshire garlicky sausage, a bunch of Hampshire cheese with local sourdough bread and chutney, more than a pint of Hampshire apple juice, some potato salad, some garden salad, and then strawberry shortcake. It was a good pre-birthday party. Mac managed to eat two sausages AND two burgers. I think it's fair to say that neither of us are vegetarians.