Corn on the cob

Haven't updated this for a while, I know - we've been out/away/poorly quite a bit since creating it.

Today's dinner was hardly a culinary masterpiece but it gives me a chance to enthuse about our local farmers' market, and about farmers' markets in general - not only a way more fun and fulfilling shopping experience, but also make it ludicrously easy to make a tasty vegetarian meal without really even trying. The lady on the veg stall today told me that the corn we were buying had been picked this morning, and dammit you could taste that fact. And the little cardboard sign on the potatoes was not telling a lie when it said they were 'excellent roasted'.

WHAT WE ATE

- Corn on the cob (boiled for 6-8 mins then slathered with margarine, yum)
- Skin-on roast potatoes (little ones - cut into small-ish cubes, then sprinkled with mixed herbs, salt and pepper once in the roasting tray)
- Runner beans (sliced cross-ways and boiled for maybe 5 mins)

Grand total prep time probably about 10-15 minutes, total cost for two people around £2. And by god it was good.

A TEDIOUS NOTE

Being the tedious person that I am, I decided to test my theory that farmers' markets are almost always cheaper than supermarkets, so that I could feel smug about the bargains I got.

So. Today at the farmers' market I spent an unusually hefty £18 (which may or may not have been accurate, since they took the dangerous step of letting me add it up myself as I went along), for which I got:

Two punnets of plums, one of blackberries and one of blueberries; six eating apples and four cooking apples; two ears of corn; five white onions, one red onion, one bulb of garlic; one aubergine; one green pepper; one broccoli, one punnet of fresh peas, a bunch of runner beans; four tomatoes; one-and-a-half kilos of potatoes; six free-range eggs.

Here it is, in all its glory:


According to the Sainsbury's website (I did try Tesco, but it wouldn't let me unless I faffed about getting a Clubcard), this would have cost me £24.11 to buy there. Well, almost - I had to substitute blackcurrants for the blackberries, since apparently Sainsbury's aren't selling blackberries, despite the fact that they are falling off a bramble bush near you as I type. Tch.

Um, yeah. Farmers' markets! Yay!