I wanted...I bought... I made

I am intent I think on steak for Saturday supper as it has been a while. And it was brilliant. Had it with the above garden salad - always thought saying 'serve with a garden salad' is an instruction akin to 'exit pursued by a bear'. Then I moved to a place with a garden. Sunday I am thinking a savoury tart semi disaster, used a loose bottom pan which simply drained all the egg and cream into the pan underneath, tipped it back in (!) but ended up with a creamy crust topped with spinach and cheese with salads and leftovers for lunches. Monday some tofu and some aubergine steamed omelette and salad, Tuesday chilli pasta beef stir fry and green mango salad, Wednesday I am out with the french ladies so the man will fend for himself, Thursday maybe chicken and salad cucumber stuffed with pork and prawns then steamed served with steamed ginger cabbage and chilli sauce, Friday omelette and salad hot viet rice paper parcels wrapped inside lettuce with herbs and a spicy salad. I love salad!

Saturday morning and the sun was shining. Again! Loving this weather. The market wasn't too busy which adds to the pleasure. Charlie was back at the Ginger Pig after time away in Glossop working with Mettricks Butchers. Sounds like a different set up to Borough but much of the same ethos of caring properly for animals and producing great meat. One day - hoepfully soon - Charlie will use all this accrued knowledge to open his own business. For some reason he's decided not to try his first t-bone steak till he has his own shop - I cannot imagine making such a decision, even if we only indulge rarely. I guess he doesn't know what he's missing - but he's in for a treat when it happens. I bought a nice thick slice of rump dinner Saturday and stir fry Tuesday and some pork mince a quarter still in the freezer the rest to stuff cucumbers Thusday and make little viet parcels Friday - £17.85

Next stop Booths where they had no good looking potatoes which is unusual but none of them called to me so I bought cucumber stuffed it and steamed it! and flat white peaches instead they had a perfect scent, the man had them in his lunchbox but there will be more this week - £1.90

At the Calabrian stall, which has been there in the green market for a while but I'd never visited, I sampled some olive oils in search of something interesting for salads. One was very delicate, one was seriously grassy - apparently the one that is most popular in the market - and one was somewhere in between, which I bought - £5.50 Also sampled a great honey.

Over at Wild Beef Lizzie was cheerful as she's off on holiday this week to Cornwall so I bought 2 boxes of eggs to tide us over - £3

Tomatoes from the Isle of Wight because they are such lovely sweet fruit - £3.50

Teds Veg had new potatoes at £3.50 a kilo which is too steep for me and their fennel looked a bit sad too so bought nothing

Secretts had Cornish new potatoes for £5 a kilo - soooo absolutely not!

Gianni seems very cheerful to be back at Gastronomica, the woman ahead of me was most delighted with the samples of goat and gorgonzola she tried, so she bought both. I needed a chunk of Parmesan, also bought a lovely piece of bra to go with the peaches and he threw in a couple of small smoked mozzarellas that need melting then eating for true delight - £20

Bought a small pork pie for the man for Wednesday tea from Elizabeth King's - £3.50

Milk and yoghurt at Neals Yard - £6.70

Bread from Flour Power - £1.10

So didn't get potatoes here at all - got some in my local veg shop and made potato salad which was okay but not great, might need rethinking! Spent £63.05

Later in the day I bought rice and peanut oil and mango and tofu at Wing Yip in Brixton to round out the week a bit then butter and salt and biscuits from the supermarket plus another cucumber Friday to have with dinner