Local Food

Yesterday I wanted to get on with making the first batch of Marmalade, but I also had some shopping to do as when I looked at the recipes for the preserve I realised I needed a couple more items. As I want to make something a bit more luxurious as well as the standard recipe, one that had a bit more spice and one more adult by adding some alcohol. I have enough Oranges as I had bought about eight or nine pounds (weight) of fruit. It’s been a while since I made any preserves that my mind was not able to picture what quantity of fruit I needed. I am just glad that I have a good stock of jars.

Also I needed to boil the cloth that I use instead of muslin, you can not believe just how impossible it is to get, so I use some plain cotton curtain material. But I always boil it for half an hour to ensure that it was sterile first.

I did most of the preparation this morning but I would leave the cooking until after getting back from the supermarket. That enabled me to clean the kitchen, as if I am filming in there I want it to look as hygienic as it really is.

While I do endeavour to buy local and support small business, there are some things I just can not get without using the supermarket. I can get cheese in the local shops but the range is limited and its all processed stuff. If I want anything close to good cheese then it has to be the supermarket. The same applies for specialist tea. When I first moved to the village I tried to get a good Assam Tea, but no where stocked it, nor would they order it telling me that there was no demand. Even pointing out that I was looking for it did not help. Therefore in the village we get what we are given not what we want. Therefore the demand falls, the prices go up and the cycle of decline sets in. In the village it is often the shops themselves that are killing their own businesses. The perfect example is the Green Grocer in the village; it is still cheaper to pay the bus fare into Consett than to buy vegetables or fruit in Chopwell.

The perfect example came up today when a 1kilo bag of sugar was just shy of £1 yet in Consett it is sixty-five pence. With price differences as steep as that it is no wonder the shops locally are struggling. While I do want to support and keep local services, I am not rich and need to watch my pennies too.

However, I don’t fully trust the supermarkets with their claims. One of the products I needed was coffee, and I noticed the supermarkets own brand fair trade coffee. This was fully a pound cheaper than Café Direct the fair trade coffee I generally buy was. Now for them to be that much cheaper on their own brand did that mean that they were paying less or cutting their profit? I suspect a bit of both, but also I reasoned that this could damage one of the major brands that support Fair Trade and stuck with Café Direct.

As I have reported here previously, by changing to buying from local shops, in general I am helping to keep my food bills down. I would love to buy more locally produced produce, but I have to make the effort and go to places that are not easily accessible by public transport to do this, and the costs can be excessive for the items. One example recently was sixty pence a pound for organic carrots. When I can get them at a third of that price and relatively locally grown (North Yorkshire), I will support my cheaper local supplier.

Ever since moving to the village, I have been here for two and half years now, I have tried to get on an Organic Veg box scheme but no one will deliver to the village. Even when I found seven other people who were interested, they still refused our custom. Therefore while I would love to buy only food produced locally or within a hundred-mile radius, it is nearly impossible to do that here. Even the businesses that say they want local customers see this "Working Class" area as lacking the rich pickings of locations like Hexham. It has taken me time, but I have found some good relatively local shops. But equally, I don’t want to spend half my life travelling to many different shops or locations, adding to neither my cost of living nor my carbon footprint. Thus I have to be realistic and work towards the least environmentally damaging options that are available to me, without making a "Hair Shirt" for myself.