I Love... Grocers!

Specifically grocers on market stalls, but even the shops are par excellence for buying cheap fruit and veg, which in a 'credit crunch' with the government breathing down our necks to be healthy is a good thing!

I am ashamed to admit that I had never really bought fruit from a grocer on a market stall until I was about 23 and I was doing Weight Watchers for the first time. I was shopping with my mum in Sunderland and we were both really hungry. One of the drawbacks of the plan we were doing for WW (hereinafter referred to as Fat Club, which was our collective pet name for it and any other slimming classes we went to) was that snacking was difficult and carbs were a big no-no so we were struggling to find anything to snack on. It was at that point that we passed a stall selling fruit and veg. I happened to see that they were selling very fresh looking grapes and we stopped to buy some, and my love affair with the market produce stalls was born.

I have today purchased 1lb of grapes, 3 conference pears and a punnet of Scottish strawberries for the princely sum of £2.30. This pleases me as I went to Sainsbury's supermarket on Monday night and bought a punnet of raspberries and happened to notice that a punnet of strawberries was £2, and they were Spanish so not as nice.

Of course, there are drawbacks to this kind of shopping. Firstly you have to have cash, and oftentimes the grocers are a bit gruff if you only have large notes and no change, although most of them are cheerful ruddy cheeked types with leather money pouches and dirty fingernails.

There are also grocers who sell produce that is less than fresh and you have to watch out for these as it's a false economy to buy food cheap and then have it go off before you can eat it. Having said that I bought a peach in Sainsbury's and within a couple of days it was almost liquid in the fruit bowl, so the big supermarkets are just as guilty of selling produce that's past it's best.

The worst obstacle, for me at least, is the face to face nature of the transaction. I am probably (hopefully) not the only person in the world who is glad that the old system of going into a shop with a long counter and asking for everything that you want item by item is long dead. I can't stand having to ask for what I want, I long for the days when everything is mechanised like the self scan checkouts in supermarkets these days. I especially find market traders to be very difficult to approach and I find myself babbling incoherently at them while they're weighing my produce or taking my money so that they don't think I'm being rude!

Anyway, this is detracting from my joy at being able to buy cheap fruit and veg from jovial and obliging farm types so I will end with that thought...