MY wife and I have recently spent a few days in Paris and we visited two or three of the very popular local street markets on our wanderings.
Two factors struck me more than anything else – virtually all fruit and vegetables are sold loose and they are labelled clearly with their country of origin, allowing the vast numbers of customers to make an informed choice about their purchases.
Sadly this is not always the case in British shops and supermarkets. Of course, the French are much more patriotic than us and their fresh produce seems to be either from France or from countries that were French colonies in the past, and so they are proud to display the signs that tells you.
Having searched a number of websites for up-to-date information on British fresh fruit and vegetables for this time of year, I am a little shocked at the lack of clear information on the origins of these products – I wonder how much our supermarkets do to support our growers?
So, over the next four weeks, if you search high and low enough and ask enough questions, you should be able to find the following fruit and vegetables produced by British growers – eating and cooking apples, pears, forced rhubarb, onions, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, swedes, turnips, leeks, curly kale, purple sprouting broccoli, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, spring greens and Brussels sprouts.
There will also be British glasshouse grown peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes and there may be some early table-top grown strawberries before the end of March, but the flavour of these is sometimes a little questionable as it is very early in our growing season and the sun’s energy is not long or strong enough to generate sugars for flavour yet.
Take a look at the new co-operative greengrocers in Slaithwaite, The Green Valley Grocer, for local and regional produce. Visit http://slaithwaite.coop/ or call in at 14 Carr Lane, Slaithwaite – they are closed on Sundays.
