Wednesday 29th April 2015

It’s hard to focus on little food and market related stories every week when there is so much going on in the world. There are plenty of things going on but the earthquake in Nepal was particularly shocking this week. Thankfully we have the opportunity to send some help there at the market this weekend as our local Stroud Rotary Club will be collecting to send “Shelter Boxes” to Nepal. ShelterBox aid is tailored to a disaster but typically includes a disaster relief tent for a family, thermal blankets and groundsheets, water storage and purification equipment, solar lamps, cooking utensils, a basic tool kit, mosquito nets and children’s activity pack. It costs about £500 to send one box so come on Stroud Farmers’ market, let’s make sure one of them is paid for by us!

Elsewhere it’s a right old busy one with lots of stalls; Strawberries are back and Hotch Potch have tunnel grown organic green beans (delicious!); lettuces and salad bags at Coleshill; leafy Kale crisps return; Godsell’s cheeses fly the Single Gloucester flag in the absence of Jonathan Crump and we have Ale from Gloucester and Cirencester; the Lavender garden are in as well as Lansdown and Taena Potteries; we even have dog treats from Longney, fudge from Chalford and free range turkey eggs from France Lynch!

Anyway, away from all the excitement I was looking around recently and it struck me how some things are just taken for granted so I thought I would make a special mention this week for the fabulous Leek; a vegetable so normal and unassuming that we probably don’t even give it credit for being available almost throughout the whole year. It is of course related to the onion and garlic species and we all know, I’m sure, that it has a subtle oniony taste. What I, and expect most of you, didn’t know was that this vegetable is considered one of the “World’s Healthiest Foods” because of the sheer range of vitamins and minerals it contains; all the way up the green bits as well!