Favourite Things Friday

I'm going to preface this post by saying it isn't a joke. It's not April 1st and I'm not pulling your leg. Seriously. And I think this is going to sound like I'm standing on a soap box today and trying to convert people and I'm truly not. 

At the beginning of the year I vowed not to make any resolutions. But I did make a decision to try to cook more meals using fresh, seasonal produce and to increase my fruit and vegie intake. You may find this surprising if you've been hanging out round here for a while because I think my apathy towards vegetables has been fairly well documented. 

Then I started to explore why I don't really love vegetables and the conclusion I came to was that most fruit and vegetables are pretty tasteless and bland. I havent had a peach in years that tastes like the peaches we had as kids (which incidentally was the last time I was really happy about eating vegetables) And then I started worrying about pesticides and insecticides from mass produced stuff and about all the stuff I've been putting in my mouth that's been kept in storage for months before it gets to my fridge. And then I started worrying about all the battery hens that live their miserable lives in cages so I can have eggs that aren't all that good anyway so I can save a couple of bucks and I seriously started to hate myself. 

So after I had freaked myself right out about contributing to the downfall of the poor chooks and had gotten really mad about the supermarkets selling us cruddy quality fruit and vegetables and making us pay top dollar I went in search of a small local greengrocer who sources as locally as possible (thinking about my carbon foot print here), who didn't use excess packaging if possible and who had a range of organic offerings too. 

And I found one about 10 minutes from my house and his prices are really good too. And this places  has signs up on all the produce telling you exactly where things come from. 

Not only are we eating a ton more fruit (I hadn't had an empty fruit bowl at the end of the week ever and often threw out questionable stuff at the end of the week ) but I'm buying things that I wouldn't have bought before like organic free range smoked dry cured bacon and the most awesome eggs I've ever tasted. That must be because they come from happy hens.

Doesn't that fruit bowl look fabulous? Those peaches are the last of the season so there wont be any more till next Summer which is exactly how it should be.  And those pears are new season pears and they are so delicious and juicy. I even bought some funky new fangled variety of potatoes last week because they are meant to be great for making your own gnocchi. 

So my favourite thing this week is discovering a new found like for eating healthy fresh stuff and looking up new recipes for vegetables. Seriously. Little Miss Sunshine - you can come and stay knowing you'll be fed green stuff while you're here.