Set for a lovely weekend with sunshine galore Borough was busyish but eminently do-able. Lots of brilliant produce mountained everywhere - fresh carrots with bright tops, frilly lettuce in every shade of green, big bunches of beets, shiny red tomatoes and dirty little potatoes calling out to be consumed. Obviously I obliged.Starting as always at the Ginger Pig I bought some chicken carcasses as I'd run out of stock, which I then went home and made - a couple of chicken breasts - meant to be grilled with salad in the week but ended up in the freezer and the same of pork chops - also in the freezer but that was intentional for next week - £13.50
Juice - strawberry, orange and watermelon for a spring kick - from Total Organics - £3
Wanted a chilled platter for Saturday supper so bought a fat fresh cream mozzarella - an Italian spring speciality where big balls of mozzarella are injected with fresh cream that spills out when torn apart, a quite wonderful treat and also got a little piece of hard toma that the pretty cheese guy assured me was a slice of joy - it was! - surely a bargain at £5
Then went to the other Gastronomica stall and bought fennel salami and blackest braesola to add to the night's feast - Saturday - £5.50
From a stall selling turkish produce I'd not visited before I bought a little tub of olives - salt dried and crumpled and wonderfully creamy - some with the platter Saturday night some left over for a salad - £1.50
Wandered over to Booths to find that their supplies were a little thin on the ground, not everything crisp and shiny and abundant, as is usual. No jersey royals or cornish new potatoes, only Cyprus and they're not my favourites either. So I had a sligthly truncated shop there this week but still managed to get asparagus - for pasta, bananas - for smoothies and lunches, rocket - Saturday supper, strawberries - a bargain 3 punnets a pound - really really pink smoothies, and a handful of crunchy sugarsnaps - lunches- £7
Back to the Green Market for sprightlier veg - a creamy headed cauliflower - a not entirely successful curry with potatoes, a fat little fist of fennnel - still sat fat and crunchy in the fridge, oak leaf lettuce - used the very heart of it the following Sunday but much of it was wasted and lincolnshire satisfied my desire for new potatoes - for the curry and also boiled to serve with butter and grilled sausages Monday night and cold with Helmans for lunch on Tuesday - £3.20
Then 5 satsumas from the pile em high veg stall - lunches - £1
And a punnet of baby plums from the Isle of Wight tomato man - lunches - £3.50
Back past the pork pie stall and so must have one of those - Saturday lunch- £4.95
Milk, yoghurt - smoothies for Sunday and Monday breakfast, pasta - with asparagus Sunday night, cream - same with the cream - and bread from Neals Yard - £8.90
A brownie for my man and an almond croissant for me - £3.50
A not unreasonable total - £60.55
2 comments:
Wow, what a fantastic idea for a blog. I love Borough Market, too. But surely these groceries couldn't have sustained your family for a whole week? You have to admit, it is a smidge on the pricey side to shop at Borough all the time. Don't you? Lenny.
Lenny it's true that Borough is not cheap but it is consistently great. I do almost all my food shop for the week there for me and my love and it does feed us for the week. I pack lunches for us most mornings - takes me about 5 minutes - and that saves lots of money. We both work in Central London, lunch is minimum £4 each every day - so there's £40 extra already. I do buy some other stuff - tins of cannellini beans and tomatoes, packets of arborio rice and some pasta from Italian delis like Camisa or Terroni & Sons, noodles and greens from Chinatown or Wing Yip in Brixton, Indian spices and lentils from Taj Stores in Brick Lane and, most consistently, bread from Paul or St John. I have a plan for maybe half of what I buy and the rest I make up as the week progresses but I throw very little food away. Sometimes the freezer is very full! Shopping at Borough is seasonal so I can balance a weeks food with some expensive items and the rest utterly reasonable.
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