A lovely Haul of Vegetables from Hampshire Famers' market

This morning, the Husband, Pink and I made a foray down to Winchester for the Hampshire Farmers’ Market. We took Fred the dog with us to fill the gap left by Blue who was off for the day with the Cubs. He alternately pulled on the lead desperate to look at whatever we weren't looking at, or sulked, so made a fitting replacement for a small child.

It’s ages since we’ve made it down the this fantastic market – it’s held on the 2^nd and 4^th Sundays of the month, and well worth it. In my fantasy world, the one where I don’t shout at the kids, never eat more than one biscuit/piece of cake/chocolate/cheese etc, and the dog doesn’t kill ducks, rabbits or frankly, anything that moves and is smaller than a sheep, I shop on an almost daily basis at such a market. The reality is that more often than not, I’m online to the supermarket, begging them to have a delivery slot at a convenient time to me. I have done veg boxes, but we usually have a reasonable amount in the garden. Unfortunately this is not the case at the moment.

Anyway, it was lovely. Not particularly busy – certainly not as busy as it has been sometimes when we’ve managed to get ourselves down there, but lots of lovely stalls to visit, some very good things to taste, and gorgeous produce to buy.

This is my haul: asparagus, green garlic, tomatoes, radishes, strawberries, fennel, broad beans,

 I also got a block of vegetarian ‘parmesan’ type cheese )(as to which, see below for more) and some merguez sausages that I just couldn’t resist.

And a doughnut. For Pink.

The garlic came from The Garlic Farm stall. They have amazing looking garlic, and I love the smell that hangs gently round the stall. They sell green garlic, normal garlic, elephant garlic, smoked garlic, plus other garlic related stuff. On taste they had  garlic butter. We had to leave when I realised that Pink was on about her 3^rd cracker, and was digging deep into the pot that was out for tasting, but not before buying some lovely green garlic. I’m going to cook something with the ‘scapes’ (the long top bit that looks a bit like a leek) tomorrow.

I loved The Tomato Stall too. Even though they haven’t had enough sun and they haven’t got as many tomatoes they still had these beautiful red and yellow baby plum tomatoes for sale. I couldn’t resist.

Mr Bookham and his 'Sussex Charmer'

The last stall I’m going to mention is the Bookhams stall where they sell their ‘Twineham Grange Vegetarian Pasta Cheese’. They aren’t allowed to call it parmesan, but it’s made in the same way, although using vegetarian rennet, and I love it. It has Vegetarian Society approval, and I think it is a worthy alternative.

With all this booty, I had a lovely time in the kitchen this afternoon/evening deciding what to cook, and then cooking. Yesterday majored on BBQ, so today was pleasingly meat-free.

We had Tomato and Vegetarian Pasta Cheese tart, with Green Lentils, Asparagus and Watercress salad, more asparagus and broad beans, followed by honey wholemeal cake with strawberries macerated with mint. Just the thing for a summer (yes – summer – the sun was shining!!) evening.